My favourite blue tit fact is that they are sexually dichromatic under UV light only. The male crown is brighter in UV and females prefer males with brighter crowns. Mere humans can't tell the difference.
Comes from this rather brilliantly titled paper: Blue tits are ultraviolet tits https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1688906/
I'm a little surprised at how little difference there is.
Yes, some of the colors shift due to the false-color addition of the UV channel but there were no new patterns or highlighted areas.
Happy to realize this did not say ultraviolent. A small but confusing Clockwork Orange reading mistake.
theyy could at least show cassowaries!
Daytime birds are tetrachromats (as are some reptiles), and have dedicated receptors for UV, so they see each other VERY different than we see them!
If you want a nice take on what that would be like for humans - Greg Egan has an interesting short story called “Seventh Sight” about people bio hacking themselves to gain expanded spectral perception. It’s in his Instantiation Anthology.
Very different vibe but reminds me of The Oatmeal's tribute to the mighty Mantis Shrimp.
A fact related to something in the ocean, cephalopods have photoreceptors that are oriented neatly with nerves in the back, as you would expect. But mammals have the nerves coming out the front, in the way of the path of light! [1]
So, cephalopods have sensors that match a modern camera that's "back illuminated", with metal layer/routing out of the way, and humans have a old type "front" illuminated sensor [2].
[1] Nice image here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/10150112797390640/posts/1017...
[2] https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/features/what-is-a-bsi-se...
Be thankful we're not mantis shrimp. Color displays and cameras would be such a pain to make
Wow. That is a worth a glance, folks.
> reminds me of...
As long as we are already on a tangent about rods, cones, and visual perception: one of my favorite fact is that the occasional genetic mutation that creates color blindness in men sometimes leaves a woman with "tetrachromacy". Four sets of rods and cones which increases color perception from some one-million colors to one-hundred million colors.
There was a neat story on the San Diego local news some years ago about a woman artist who was a tetrachromat. Fascinating interview. This woman said that the downside of perceiving additional colors is that something like the cereal aisle in a common supermarket could be a total sensory overload. But she of course said also that she appreciated the extra things she could see. :)