Prospects for trichromatic color vision in male Cebus monkeys

Abstract

Polymorphic color vision is characteristic of many species of New World monkey. A fundamental feature of the polymorphism is that male monkeys are routinely dichromatic. A recent paper describes an experiment in which Cebus monkeys were required to discriminate between pairs of Munsell color chips (Pessoa VF, Tavares MCH, Aguiar L, Gomes UR, Tomaz C. Color vision discrimination in the capuchin monkey Cebus apella: evidence for trichromaticity. Behav Brain Res 1997;89:285-288). The results were interpreted as demonstrating trichromatic color vision in male Cebus monkeys. An examination of the literature on Cebus. monkey photopigments and results from a replication of the discrimination experiment conducted with dichromatic human subjects cast doubt on this claim.