A team of researchers has invented a revolutionary process that makes it possible to create images that resemble the visions of animals. Many people do not see the same colors as we do, such as birds, bees or mice.
You've probably wondered how your dog or cat sees the world. Like many animals, they don't see it the way we do. Biologists have known this for a long time, but for the first time, a team has brought this knowledge to life with photos and videos that take the eyesight of specific animals into account live. We still have to wait a little longer for pets, but their unprecedented demonstration already makes us understand a little more the world of birds or insects.
Incredible technology
When it comes to color, it's all a matter of the visible light spectrum, which is specific to each species. That's the case with us wavelengths that we can see vary between approximately 400 and 700 nanometers. But this is not the case with other species, because in the animal kingdom there are many different views, specific to the survival of each animal. In their eyes, the combination of light receptors is not the same as ours. So when sunlight and its UV radiation reflect from the environment and objects, the visible result changes depending on the visual abilities of a bee or a mouse. Humans can see green colors well, while dogs only see blue and green, and birds have a strong sensitivity to ultraviolet light, making their vision even more contrasting and rich than ours.
This is shown, for example, by researchers from the University of Sussex and George Mason University in Virginia in the journal PLOS Biology Birds I don't really see the “blue” sky, but “UV blue”, which they represented by a purple hue. At the BeesTheir vision is adjusted to help them find flowers faster, so they are more sensitive to certain UV spectra what we are not clear about. Scientists demonstrate this sensitivity in a video in which we see a man applying sunscreen to his arm right next to a flower. The flower is seen by the bee as a bright yellow, just like sunscreen, which reflects UV radiation and therefore appears in the complex light frequencies that pollinators detect.
Defense mechanism
“We have long been fascinated by how animals see the world,” study lead author Daniel Hanley told the Chron. “Modern techniques in sensory ecology allow us to draw conclusions about how static scenes might appear to an animal. However, animals often make crucial decisions regarding moving targets.” So the video shows the movement of a caterpillar as a predator would see it. To us it is a green caterpillar with black and yellow markings, but to some animals the latter would be a bright red-orange color. In the animal kingdom, such nuances mean danger, a certain toxicity. Many species animal and plant have developed such a color-related protective mechanism called aposematism. A defense that can prove effective.
Daniel Hanley/PLOS
To obtain these results, the biologists used two cameras, one recording visible light and the other recording ultraviolet light using a special box. Everything ends up in software they programmed that processes the images so that they reflect a specific animal perspective. According to New Scientist's Daniel Hanley, the method can work on many insects, spiders, lizards, turtles, birds and mammals.
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