Human color vision represents only one of a number of alternative ways in which animals exploit spectral differences in their visual environments in support of behavioral choice. In recent years, comparative examinations of color vision in a wide variety of different species, coupled with even more broad-scale studies of the genes that specify photopigment proteins (opsins), have provided insights into the multiple pathways followed during the evolution of color vision. Among other things, these advances show how our own color capacity and that of our close primate relatives likely arose.