Animal Colour Vision with Daniel Osorio, Wednesday May 13th 2026

Animal Colour Vision with Daniel Osorio, 7:30pm on Wednesday May 13th 2026 at the Wagner Hall
In the Origin of Species Darwin saw that a ‘nearly similar taste for beautiful colours runs through a large part of the animal kingdom’, but cautioned that explanation was ‘very obscure’. For much of the 20th century there was debate about what was obvious to Darwin – that non-human species saw colour, but today researchers combine knowledge of the light sensing cells in our eyes with experiments on animal behaviour to understand how non-human species, such as bees, birds and fish, perceive and learn about colour. To finish I might try to answer to Darwin’s question about why we might share a nearly similar taste for beautiful colours with species whose eyes are brains are very different from our own.
Daniel Osorio has worked at the School of Life Sciences in Sussex University for over thirty years. He has studied vision and the visual worlds of many animals, including butterflies, birds, fish, cuttlefish and even monkeys, seeking to understand how historical chance and functional necessity explain how they see colour and form.
Timings: Doors and Bar open 7:00pm; talk starts 7:30pm. Q+A at 8:15pm; event ends approx 9:00pm.