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I was going over the lecture notes on the NeuroSerendip site again, and found a interesting little tid bit.  "Most vertebrates have have four cone pigments.  Most mammals have two."  And we, humans, have three cones.  Typically, we think of mammals as evolutionarily more advanced than other vertebrates (reptiles, amphibians, birds...).  We also have the tendency to think that more is better.  So most vertebrates have four cones, and mammals only have two? But mammals are more advanced, they evolved from the general pool of vertebrates! Mammals should have the same amount of cones--if not more-- than the average vertebrate! (I'm sensing some discord, and I won't even get into humans.)Well, these variations in cone number mean that there are many different ways to see reality--not that we haven't found enough reasons already.  Also, I think it means that more really isn't necessarily better.  Since mammals evolved from earlier vertebrates, something has selected for a lower number of cones.  Or maybe they just weren't required any more so they started to disappear.  Either way, mammals seem to do just fine with two cone pigments, as do vertebrates with four, and humans with three.I think that people in general feel the need to catagorize everything on a scale of better and worse compared to some standard, and that standard is usually human.  There are many different paths (cone pigment number) to the same end (sight), but really those ends are all different.  Even so, they are all interpretations of the same reality.