Aussies have colourful world according to ABC News in Science, 28 Mar 2005. A team of scientists led by Catherine Arrese of the University of Western Australia have found that Australian marsupials have the right types of cells in their eye to give them full colour vision. Colour is caused by different wavelengths of light, e.g. long waves look red, short waves blue. As wavelengths get shorter, colours change through the rainbow spectrum, i.e. red to orange, to yellow, to green, to blue to violet, which has the shortest wavelength of visible light. Colour is detected by cone cells in the back of the eye.
For good colour vision an animal needs at least three different kinds of cone cells – long wave, medium wave and short wave. Reptiles, birds, primates and humans have a multi-cone system that enables full colour vision, but until recently it was believed that most mammals, including marsupials, had only two cones, and were therefore partly colour blind. So far, Arrese’s team have found the three cone system in marsupials such as the quokka, the quenda, the fat tailed dunnart and the honey possum. Arrese believes that all marsupials have full colour vision because, “if a characteristic appears in two groups of distantly-related species of marsupials then it suggests it is across the species”. The researchers also claim their discovery will help explain the evolution of colour vision in humans. Catherine Arrese commented: “About 45 million years ago humans appear to have lost two types of cone cells found in reptiles but then developed and re-evolved with the third type of cell that is long and medium wavelength sensitive and picks up reds and greens.”
Editorial Comment: It seems that colour vision has to be added to an ever growing list of characteristics that have “had to” evolve at least twice in order to keep evolutionary trees intact. But it takes more than just having right cone cells to give colour vision. To see all the subtle variations in colour in our environment the brain has to be able to take signals from the different kind of cones, along with signals from the rods (cells that detect the overall brightness of light), then put them all together, and interpret them using an already existing memory program. Presumably, evolutionists believe this brain function evolved and re-evolved as well. If you need complex eyes, connecting nerves, brains and inbuilt programs at the same time, it is far more logical to believe an intelligent Creator made them all at the same time when He created each kind of animal.
The Gospel of John chapter 9, records the time when the Creator, the Lord Jesus Christ, gave sight to a man blind from birth. The details also imply He programmed the man’s brain at the same time so he could see and interpret the images his newly healed eyes provided. The fact that people go blind from degenerative diseases is a reminder that all living organisms in this world are subject to decay and going downhill, and every time scientists and engineers produce a device that replaces diseased or damaged body functions they are providing evidence that the Biblical history of the world, i.e. created perfection followed by degeneration, is the correct one. (Ref. design, bio-engineering, perception)