TIL crows, starlings and similar birds only *look* black to us — they’re actually very colorful in ways human eyes are unable to perceive. 🤯
Remember that next time people can’t see your “colors”.
Some colors just require different eyes.
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@leaverou Evidence, if needed, that we do not see the real world - what we experience is an approximate proxy.
Besides - the light rays from an object tend to fan in all directions - we only got a tiny sliver of these rays impinging on our retinas. So we only ever perceive very partially. And only perceive a minuscule fraction of all wavelengths.
@leaverou
I used to toss peanuts to crows regularly, and they were comfortable approaching me. One day in early winter, an hour or so after sunrise, a crow walked in front of me, between me and the sun. I was wearing amber polarized sunglasses, and just for ten seconds or so I saw red and turquoise bars on its wings - one of the most astonishing and beautiful things I remember. I've never been able to duplicate it, and have never found corroborating evidence, but I remember thinking "oh that's how they can tell each other apart"
@leaverou wait, birds are tetrachromatic?
i think you already know, but if not:
there are human tetratchromats, they are rare
all women
because women get two copies of genes related to vision which are on the sex chromosomes: XX, while men get one copy: XY. so only women can get one normal gene, and one with a mutation that shifts one of the three cones, thus giving them tetrachromacy
normal people can see 1-10 million colors, such rare women can see 100 million or more
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140905-the-women-with-super-human-vision
@leaverou Just today morning i layed in the sun with my dog and a flock of starlings started scavaging the park we were in. The sunlight reflected super colorful on them.
@leaverou I don't think that infography makes any sense. We do have a sensibility to green, but we still see colors from 400nm to 800nm. Also, what species of crow is that? I don't know any with white spots and a yellow beak.
Is there any source for that?
@leaverou Could you make the colors visible by taking a photo in RAW format and adjusting the color settings? I don't know how camera sensors work, but maybe they're able to capture these colors.
@leaverou Who keeps putting the UV at the lower, and infrared at the upper part of the spectrum??!
@leaverou Albeit the above is very true, this is also very much not a crow.
