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Author Topic: birds see more colours than us  (Read 1287 times)

roycv

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birds see more colours than us
« on: July 22, 2019, 08:50:50 am »

Hi all I was intrigued to read that birds have an extra colour cone in their eyes which enables them to see 'colours' in the infra-red spectrum.  As we mix colours with the receptor cones we have an extra cone must be very interesting. 
I suppose we shall never be able to perceive what those colours might be, our vision being at the yellow end.  I wonder what their ancestors the dinosaurs could see?

 However it also seems that we humans are one up on the animal kingdom inasmuch we can see the red spectrum, which they in general cannot.

One of our ancestor apes developed sight in the red spectrum which enabled judging if fruit was ripe or not, a distinct advantage. 

Which comes down to the materials that we have to make colours, we have so many colours tints and shades.  I wonder if we make some colours we are not fully aware of?  I saw a TV prog. some time ago where viewers were asked if they could see colours between red and green and also yellow and blue.  Not the paint or light mix but perceived colours.  Perhaps there are a few humans that have this advantage but are unaware of it?

As I get older I find it more difficult to judge some blues and green but mainly on a laptop screen, I inadvertantly bought some shoes on line the wrong colour a year or so back!  A mix up for me of dark brown and dark blue.  When painting model boats I have quite a good perception of colour fortunately!

So are the birds lucky seeing more colours than we do?  Studies of mating choices in same species birds suggested other unknown colours may play an influence. 
It may well be a survival factor or we may carry markers that are so obvious to birds, perhaps like the heat sensitive cameras used to great effect looking for nair do wells in Police chases.

Meanwhile the Naval guys must have a terrible battle with all those shades of grey, just like life really!
Regards

Roy

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malcolmfrary

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Re: birds see more colours than us
« Reply #1 on: July 22, 2019, 10:11:40 am »

When I was sitting my entry exam for my real job, we had a colour blindness check.  The training officer (who was nominally in charge of the apprentices) came round with bits of coloured paper and presented them to us so that we could name the colours.  Blue, OK.  Orange, passed.  Green, no problem.  Brown looked brown, even if it was towards the reddish end of the range that gets tagged brown.  Grey.  Problem.  He called it "slate" because to him slates were grey (corpoate teaching), despite the evidence outside the window looking over the rooftops of Preston, that slates could be green, purple-ish and anything between, depending on where they came from.  I suspect that "slate" was used to avoid confusion with abbreviations.
We agreed on grey slates, I didn't get booted off, but I suspect I was tagged as a potential trouble maker.
Vision, like hearing, is tremendously subjective, probably along with smell and taste.  It's not just what the input organ is sensitive to, it's what the brain makes of it when it gets there.  Since it probably hasn't been thought of, there won't be a test for it, so it is likely to remain unknown.  Since we have not noticed verifiable tales of people with exeptional low light vision, probably not.  If it was an advantage, those with would have overwhelmed the others by now, in the same way that those who could tell ripe fruit didn't die young of belly-ache before they passed their genes on.

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dreadnought72

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Re: birds see more colours than us
« Reply #2 on: July 22, 2019, 02:12:14 pm »

Ex-TV camera operator here, and well-versed in colour theory. Interesting facts:


There is no colour yellow. (We don't have yellow receptors in the eye, just red, green and blue ones. Our perception of yellowness is from the combined triggering of the red and green receptors.)


Colour is cultural and therefore subject to change: the ancient Greeks talked of the wine-dark sea - a weird idea to us. The english concept of orange as a colour didn't occur before the 16th century. There is an Australian tribe (the Warlpiri) and an Amazonian tribe (the Candoshi) who, along with others, have no colour words.


Some colourblind people have the ability to spot camouflaged objects that the non-colourblind can't distinguish.


Etc...


Roy, you mention a few age-related problems with blue & greens. Claude Monet's garden paintings changed in colour tone as his cataracts became worse. How are your eyes?


Andy
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roycv

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Re: birds see more colours than us
« Reply #3 on: July 22, 2019, 03:46:15 pm »

Hi dreadnought, I do have very mild cataracts, just a faint dimming, a bright light sorts it out for me.  Interesting points you make from the cameramans point of view.  I am never quite sure what colour blindness actually is.  What colours do you not see?  I have seen the number tests in a dotted background, the thought that some one not seeing the numbers but discerning other things is interesting.

My brother was early in his life diagnosed colour blind, many years later corrected as a crap diagnosis.  So he never became an engine driver!  Ended up as an engineering officer on a ship, well it can be a bit dark down there!

I was thinking Claude Monet's paintings after I posted.  I believe the cataract operation is now the one most frequently performed.  My wife had it a year or so back and was amazed with the improvement.
I persevere with some lenses on a headband for close up stuff, they remind me of how things used to be.
Some years ago we invested in a new TV with HD, we watched it for weeks before we realised we had not activated the HD with our service provider!  I have to say I do not see very much improvement with HD and many documentaries have intentionally blurry images of re-enactments, most frustrating.
regards

Roy
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LJ Crew

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Re: birds see more colours than us
« Reply #4 on: July 22, 2019, 05:42:03 pm »

I echo Roy's wife's amazement at the difference a cataract operation makes. I am blind in one eye, ("one eyed old age pensioner with a beard" according to my wife) and so when I had the cataract removed it was a s**t or bust job for my sight. I was fitted with a transparent eye cover and could have, but didn't, driven home. 2 hours and job done. Colours were bright again and I didn't need extra light.
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