SEEING COLOR: Stylized image of the eye’s photoreceptors, the rods and cones, which respond to particular of wavelengths of light to give animals their sense of sight© ALFRED PASIEKA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/GETTY IMAGES
In a steamy Eocene jungle, a newborn monkey opens its eyes for the first time. The world it sees is unlike any other known to its primate kin. A smear of red blood shines against a green nest of leaves. Unbeknownst to its mother, this baby is special, and its eyes will shape the human experience tens of millions of years in the future. Were it not for this little monkey and the series of genetic events that created it, we might not have the color vision we do: Monet’s palette would be flattened; the ripeness of a raspberry would be hidden among the leaves; traffic lights? They likely would never have been invented.
Like most other mammals, monkeys that lived 30 million to 60 ...
