How other species see the world was something we were all in the dark about. Recent scientific research, however, has showed us the way.
And the way other animals view the world around them is as diverse as it is also magical. Snakes, for instance, can pick up infrared heat signatures, a dragonfly brain works hyper-fast, so fast, in fact, it sees movement in slow motion. Insects eyes are compound, meaning they have a honeycomb pattern with thousands upon thousands of separate lenses. Amazing as this is, one species stands out from the rest – birds.
Photo Courtesy of Ian Glover
Birds are bizarre for many reasons. For instance, the Palila bird, a Hawaiian native, eats the seeds of the māmane plant, a seed so toxic it is powerful enough to kill many small mammals. Penguins have taste buds so sensitive they can detect salty as well as sour flavors. But it is the humble pigeon that is thought to be the best animal on the planet as far as detecting colors goes. This is the reason why they are sometimes used in rescue missions. The fact is, most birds are far superior to humans when it comes to sight.
Image Courtesy of Klaus Schmitt
The graphic compares the human spectral range to the bird’s. As birds are tetrachromats, they see four colors: UV, blue, green and red, whereas we are trichromats and can only see three colors: blue, green, red. Bear in mind, that the magenta UV “color” shown here has been chosen to make it visible for us humans, it is a “false color”, as per definition UV light has no color.
Image Credits unknown
Photos Courtesy of Cynthia Tedore
Joe Smith, an ornithologist, explains that birds have the amazing ability to see a whole spectrum of colors that are invisible to us, people. Back in 2007, scientists, with the help of a spectrophotometer, analyzed the colors of 166 North American songbird species which did not have an apparent physical difference between the sexes. From a human’s perspective, in 92 percent of species, both males and females look identical. However, the study showed that these birds have colors that are simply undetectable by our eye that they differentiate their genders by.
Photos Courtesy of Joel Sartore
So for example, the male Yellow-breasted Chat has a yellow breast (pretty obvious), but its potential mates or rivals also see ultraviolet feathers on his chest that set him apart from the females of the species. The theory was again proven in another study in which scientists placed taxidermied male and female Chats in the wild to see how their living counterparts would react. Males stayed true to their territorial nature and attacked the stuffed male Chats and tried winning over the taxidermied females. Thus, they obviously were seeing something that the researchers couldn’t.
Image credits: unknown
