From grayscale to ultraviolet. The spectrum of what animals that share our environment can see is wide. To better understand how they make sense of the world, researchers have developed a camera that allows us to put ourselves “in the eyes” of some of these animals.
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Animals don't have the same photoreceptors as we do. Each animal even has its own photoreceptors. Understand that every animal sees the world in its own way. And to account for this different perception of the colors that surround us, researchers at the Hanley Color Lab at George Mason University (USA) and the University of Sussex (UK) have developed a camera and software capable of to film the colors of the world as animals see them. They explain the principle in the journal PLOS Biology.
The moving world from the animals' perspective
You could say researchers have already shown us how our dogs perceive colors. Yes. But this time the system allows us to understand a world in motion. And that in natural lighting conditions. It reproduces what biologists know about the photoreceptors found in the eyes of different animals. With an accuracy of over 90%.
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The system is based on two separate cameras. The light is divided and directed at the same time to a camera that reacts to ultraviolet light – because bees, reindeer and certain birds react to it – and to a standard camera that reacts to light visible to humans.
A system that is open to improvement
The precision achieved by the researchers shows what influence clouds can have on color perception in the animal world. And by basing their system on a commercially available camera and open source software, they hope others can adopt it and improve it further. For example, to better capture fast movements. To ultimately help us better understand how animals communicate and develop in their environment.