Talk:RWBY/@comment-174.21.50.232-20200103014125/@comment-4010415-20200103061825

With the Faunus seeing in the dark thing, I think the writers are going with the fact that Pyrrha said many Faunus can see in the dark, not all Faunus.

The Blake and Ilia scene is strange, though, since Blake has been established to be one of the many Faunus who can, in fact, see in the dark. Maybe we're supposed to assume that Faunus nightvision doesn't include much color, since the rods in your eyes, which you use for vision in low lighting, don't really pick up color all that much, whereas the cones, which are useful for good lighting conditions, do pick up color.

Rods = Useful in darker conditions, able to pick up information in lower lightning and send a signal to your brain about what they're picking up on in your vision.

Cones = Useful in lighter conditions and are used to pick up color and finer detail. Cones require a lot more light to be able to send a signal of information to your brain, so in dim or dark conditions, your cones aren't really helping you.

Basically, they may have meant for us to just assume that Blake had very little ability to differentiate color in the dark, and Ilia was merely imitating the shade of her surroundings to make it harder to pick her apart from the similarly dark objects around her. Reminder that your cones pick up fine details, not your rods.

Granted, this is assuming that Miles and/or Kerry remember these important biology facts about eyeballs, or that they even learned this in high school in the first place. There's no way to know for sure if the schools they attended even taught them this, as America's public education system is inconsistent from school district to school district.