A NOCTURNAL moth has become the first animal known to see colours in the dead of night. The moth uses this visual talent to find yellow, nectar-packed flowers in the dark, but the finding suggests that other species also use colour vision at night.
Nocturnal moths were thought to find flowers by looking for bright petals against a darker, leafy background. This difference in brightness explains why a yellow flower stands out from green leaves on a black and white photo.
To test this idea, researchers at Lund University in Sweden trained nocturnal elephant hawkmoths (Deilephila elpenor) to pick out…
