Nocturnal vision is limited by the low numbers of photons available. To improve the accordingly bad signal-to-noise ratios, nocturnal vision often involves of spatial, temporal and spectral pooling. In humans, spectral pooling – pure rod vision resulting in nocturnal colour-blindness – occurs in light levels dimmer than a half moon. Nocturnal colour vision is useful because the colour of light changes dramatically between dim twilight and moon- or starlight. The changes of the illumination colour make achromatic vision much less reliable compared to colour vision. However, the absolute threshold of colour vision has not been investigated in many animals so far. Using behavioural methods, we found that horses, with the largest terrestrial mammal eyes, have a very similar colour vision threshold as humans, and that diurnal birds loose colour vision at brighter light levels then we do. But we have also shown that nocturnal hawkmoths, nocturnal carpenter bees and nocturnal geckos can use colour vision in very dim light when humans are colour-blind. Besides these three groups, for which colour vision has been proven behaviourally, other animals may have nocturnal or dim light colour vision. Possible candidates include toads and frogs with two rod types, other large nocturnal insects, spiders and some deep-sea fishes. Finally, we are also studying, how nocturnal animals switch to other sensory modalities when vision becomes less reliable. Using moths as models, we find that while diurnal species rely on colour in the first place, nocturnal species rely more strongly on olfactory cues.