This Is How Birds See The World As Compared To Humans And It’s Pretty Amazing
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For many years, people were in the dark about how other animals see. Thankfully, recent scientific research has revealed an amazing world of animal vision diversity. For example, a dragonfly’s brain works so fast that it sees movements in slow motion, snakes pick up infrared heat signals from warm objects, thus detecting their prey, whereas horses and zebras have eyes pointed sideways, enabling them to have peripheral vision and escape danger when necessary. In addition to this, insects use compound eyes that are made of thousands of tiny lenses that look like a honeycomb pattern. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that animals are diverse in their vision and eye function, but one species in the animal kingdom stands out the most – birds.
More info: Cynthia Tedore
Image credits: Ian Glover
Birds are bizarre creatures when you really look into them. For example, did you know that penguins can only recognize salty and sour tastes? Or that Palila birds, native to Hawaii, feed on the seeds of the māmane plant, which contain a level of toxins that would easily kill any other small animal? Or that pigeons are thought to have a superior vision at color detection compared to any animal on Earth and are often used in search and rescue missions? Various avians have different superpowers and different ways of working their sensations, but one thing is true for most birds – their superior (in comparison to humans) vision.
Image credits: Klaus Schmitt
The graphic compares the human spectral field of vision 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
Image credits: 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.
Image credits: Joel Sartore
So for example, the male Yellow-breasted Chat has a yellow breast (pretty obvious), but a bird’s eye view also reveals 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
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What's horrifying is when you realize how terrible our vision is simply because we are mammals... most birds, fish and reptiles have a vision that is far superior to ours -.- At least we are lucky to be primates, so we can see a whooping THREE colors, as opposed to most mammals which know only 2 colors. But look closer at the plot on color vision - our receptors for red and green are pretty close together. For birds, they are well separated. That's because they had a longer time to adjust their color vision to be quite perfect (their 4 color receptors have existed for many, many millenia). 3-color vision in primates, however, is evolutionary pretty new (starting from mammals' inferior 2-color vision); so we aren't done yet with the adjustment of receptors. Damn. 'bout time I wrote that explanation on our color vision and its evolution, I've been mentally working on it for months! There's so much left out in this article. Gonna go back to writing that thesis, hand it in, and then go wri
That would be a cool article, just make sure you find information from legitimate sources. Have fun!
I've got a science degree. This was covered in a lecture. I remember these details very clearly because it's SUPER COOL.
*go write my own article. Must have exceeded the length limit of comments.
Or the mantis shrimp whose eyes can see colors our brains can’t even imagine
Actually, wasn't there like a woman who was born with four color cones in her eyes instead of three? Could that be like, us slowly starting to evolve to have a similar vision to birds?
YES! It's a long story...
But all of his tests showed that these women could only perceive the same colours as the rest of us - which meant only three of their cone cell types were working, so they weren't true tetrachromats. Vision, like all of our senses, is processed in the brain. Without being able to get into the head of an animal, it is only possible to know what colors can be detected and not how they "look" to the animal.
Like blellow?!
Great! I saw that on human eye evolution a few weeks ago: https://youtu.be/2X1iwLqM2t0
so we arent done yet? why would humans evolve more? what advantage does it have? the brain can only take in so much sensory info. ..we have more spectral light sensors. All senses have a trade off. We have a more balanced way of sensing the world through other means due to our environmental pressure. We arent gonna randomly inherit the oil based eyes birds have because its fundemental in their early evolution. You cant go that much backwards....you hav eto build upon an old foundation. Its like new york city...its got new stuff but it still relies on old water lines and subways etc...you cant rip down new york you have to work with the foundation so to speak
Whole lotta speculation in your comment. Vision has nothing to do with supposed evolution. Time is not a magic ingredient that allows for every possibility. If I leave a bunch of Atari 2600s plugged in for millions of years will they evolve into supercomputers?
You are so right on what has been left out. The shape of birds eyes has a lot to do with it too. Not having to deal with loooong rods and cones focusing to a narrow point is a huge benefit. Flat round eyes with no narrowing allows full spectrum reading of color. And we must remember, birds are dinosaurs. So yes, your topic of Darwinism is RIGHT ON. Write that thesis and ROCK ON!!! I so want to read this. You and I could talk forever on this subject. I studied at the Cornell Inst. of Ornithology on bird osteology. I love bones, evolution of all animals - especially mammals. Mon Dieu! Where you at?
It's not "simply because we are mammals", cats have a great UV sight that allows them to hunt at night.
After a quick google - that doesn't change their 2-color vision, though. The blue receptor can theoretically see UV light but in humans that is filtered by the lens, while in other animals it's not. Doesn't change the fact that most mammals have only two different receptors for color.
i dont think you have a full grasp on what vision is or how evolution works
Realizing just how amazingly different the senses of other species are, we migth more strongly realize that this world is a place to preserve for everyone, and to make a liveable place for everyone.
It IS pretty amazing. I agree with the top comment: another reason to be jealous of birds is that they have HDR eyes.
What's horrifying is when you realize how terrible our vision is simply because we are mammals... most birds, fish and reptiles have a vision that is far superior to ours -.- At least we are lucky to be primates, so we can see a whooping THREE colors, as opposed to most mammals which know only 2 colors. But look closer at the plot on color vision - our receptors for red and green are pretty close together. For birds, they are well separated. That's because they had a longer time to adjust their color vision to be quite perfect (their 4 color receptors have existed for many, many millenia). 3-color vision in primates, however, is evolutionary pretty new (starting from mammals' inferior 2-color vision); so we aren't done yet with the adjustment of receptors. Damn. 'bout time I wrote that explanation on our color vision and its evolution, I've been mentally working on it for months! There's so much left out in this article. Gonna go back to writing that thesis, hand it in, and then go wri
That would be a cool article, just make sure you find information from legitimate sources. Have fun!
I've got a science degree. This was covered in a lecture. I remember these details very clearly because it's SUPER COOL.
*go write my own article. Must have exceeded the length limit of comments.
Or the mantis shrimp whose eyes can see colors our brains can’t even imagine
Actually, wasn't there like a woman who was born with four color cones in her eyes instead of three? Could that be like, us slowly starting to evolve to have a similar vision to birds?
YES! It's a long story...
But all of his tests showed that these women could only perceive the same colours as the rest of us - which meant only three of their cone cell types were working, so they weren't true tetrachromats. Vision, like all of our senses, is processed in the brain. Without being able to get into the head of an animal, it is only possible to know what colors can be detected and not how they "look" to the animal.
Like blellow?!
Great! I saw that on human eye evolution a few weeks ago: https://youtu.be/2X1iwLqM2t0
so we arent done yet? why would humans evolve more? what advantage does it have? the brain can only take in so much sensory info. ..we have more spectral light sensors. All senses have a trade off. We have a more balanced way of sensing the world through other means due to our environmental pressure. We arent gonna randomly inherit the oil based eyes birds have because its fundemental in their early evolution. You cant go that much backwards....you hav eto build upon an old foundation. Its like new york city...its got new stuff but it still relies on old water lines and subways etc...you cant rip down new york you have to work with the foundation so to speak
Whole lotta speculation in your comment. Vision has nothing to do with supposed evolution. Time is not a magic ingredient that allows for every possibility. If I leave a bunch of Atari 2600s plugged in for millions of years will they evolve into supercomputers?
You are so right on what has been left out. The shape of birds eyes has a lot to do with it too. Not having to deal with loooong rods and cones focusing to a narrow point is a huge benefit. Flat round eyes with no narrowing allows full spectrum reading of color. And we must remember, birds are dinosaurs. So yes, your topic of Darwinism is RIGHT ON. Write that thesis and ROCK ON!!! I so want to read this. You and I could talk forever on this subject. I studied at the Cornell Inst. of Ornithology on bird osteology. I love bones, evolution of all animals - especially mammals. Mon Dieu! Where you at?
It's not "simply because we are mammals", cats have a great UV sight that allows them to hunt at night.
After a quick google - that doesn't change their 2-color vision, though. The blue receptor can theoretically see UV light but in humans that is filtered by the lens, while in other animals it's not. Doesn't change the fact that most mammals have only two different receptors for color.
i dont think you have a full grasp on what vision is or how evolution works
Realizing just how amazingly different the senses of other species are, we migth more strongly realize that this world is a place to preserve for everyone, and to make a liveable place for everyone.
It IS pretty amazing. I agree with the top comment: another reason to be jealous of birds is that they have HDR eyes.