How Animals Hacked the Rainbow and Got Stumped On Blue

"Until about 600 million years ago, seeing colors didn't matter so much to Earth's inhabitants — nobody had eyes."

"'Before the eye evolved, you just wouldn't have seen what was there,' says Andrew Parker, a biologist at London's Natural History Museum who studies the evolution of color."

"Simple animals back then just floated around, he says. They were aware of sunlight, but didn't have any of the biological bits and pieces needed to perceive color. Then, as Parker tells it, something really big happened."

"'A predator that could swim quickly evolved vision,' he explains."

"That predator probably looked something like a big shrimp, and now it had eyeballs — compound eyes, like the ones that flies have. '"That's when color kicked off,' Parker says."