University of Manchester researchers found that animals use the colors they see to tell the time of day.

The animals' physiology and habits are also modified according to the time of day. Specifically, the study looked at the way animals analyze light and things they see, and how it relates to their behavior at shifting times during the day. The findings ultimately confirmed what scientists had previously suspected leading up to the study itself.

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For example, as evening approaches, light becomes blue. As that happens, the animal's internal clock begins to register nightfall is approaching.

To make sure this shift in temperature level is undoubtedly due to a modification in the animal's circadian rhythm or biological clock, scientists analyzed slices from the suprachiasmatic nucleus or SCN of mice. The SCN is responsible for controlling circadian rhythms.

By measuring the firing rates in a particular SCN slice, researchers estimated if the biological clock was running fast or slow. Cells from mice that didn't see color variation lagged behind those that did. This confirmed the shift in peak body temperature was due to the clock.

The way the scientists went about this was by recreating the natural world. In doing that, they were able to create the type of environment animals would encounter and ran various tests and tracked the behavior of the animals. This ultimately had a major impact on how scientists look at animals and how animals manage their lives.

Humans also follow a circadian rhythm that aids us by telling time, and telling our bodies when we should sleep, eat, and much more.

"This is the first time that we've been able to test the theory that color affects our body clock in any mammal. It has always been very hard to separate the change in color to the change in brightness but using new experimental tools and a psychophysics approach we were successful," said lead author Dr. Timothy Brown from the Faculty of Life Sciences

Findings of the new research were published in the Open Access journal PLOS Biology.

TagsColors Regulate Animals' Internal Clocks, Study Reveal, Color, Animals, internal clock, body clock, Animals, physiology of animals, pet habits modification