TIL crows, starlings and similar birds only *look* black to us — they’re actually very colorful in ways human eyes are unable to perceive.
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@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.
@alpacamale @leaverou General camera sensors are designed to respond in the same way human perception does, thus producing what we consider to be natural photographs.
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The curves seem to be showing the sensitivity of cone cells in human eyes vs bird eyes. Humans (who aren't color blind or tetrochromats) have cells most sensitive to blue, green, and red, around the wavelengths indicates. The graphic shows that, though not in a super literal way. There are long tails on all those curves in real life. A color like yellow lights up both the green and red receptors, and that's how our brain distinguishes it from pure green or pure red.
I don't know as much about bird vision, but I think the curve is suggesting that they also have cells sensitive to UV light, and that their visible light receptor cells are most sensitive at different wavelengths than ours
There's nothing on the chart that indicates what wavelengths are actually being scattered from "black" bird feathers, but if it's in the gap between our green and red receptors, or if it's in the UV, birds eyes would be more sensitive to it. Though we CAN see some UV at the lower wavelengths if it's really bright, and we can of course see yellow and orange... Birds would just see them more brightly. The picture someone shared in another reply showing what a black bird looks like to a camera in really bright sunlight seems like a pretty good indication of what colors birds might be seeing with their more sensitive receptors at some of these wavelengths - but they are probably seeing them as brighter colors even in dimmer lighting.
@marymessall @leaverou yes, thank you, I think it's about that. I'd enjoy a source to better understand all of this, and yes, ideally compare the colors curve of the bird with the human vision.
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@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?
Edit: definitely, the curves don't mean anything
Do an image search for starlings.
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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.
@leaverou *yells this forever in 'autistic'*
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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.
@leaverou even the physical definition of a black body emits electromagnetic radiation following Plank's law. The definition of something being "black" is if it looks black to humans because it is a useful definition, but yes, if you start looking in other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum you will find all sorts of interesting stuff that humans are blind to.
Did you know that phones would be really shiny if you could see radio frequency?
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@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?
Edit: definitely, the curves don't mean anything
@petitmote The alt text is wrong: that's very much a starling, which even to my human (pretty-sure-non-tetrachromatic) eyes only need a little sunlight on them to be irridescent.
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@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.
@alpacamale Cameras sensors work in black & white and have colour filters in front of it.
The exact filter layout varies depending on exact sensor types/brands (there's more than one type of filter), unless filter is removed, they all filter out infrared and ultraviolet. So you can't "see" ultra-violet by just editing RAW. Nor printers and screen can render it.
One might amplify visible colors and add fake colours, such as violet (instead of UV, which can't be seen by humans anyway)
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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.
@leaverou so now we are birds haha
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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.
@leaverou birds are tetrachromats and can see UV.
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@leaverou wait, birds are tetrachromatic? Cool!
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
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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.
It’s much easier to see with Starlings but the light has to be right.
I have a bunch of shots like this one that shows the iridescent nature of the starlings fairly clearly. Obviously it would be much more dramatic if the camera could detect further into the IR and UV but this is unmodified out of a Nikon D5300 and is how I remember it looked to my eye.
I’ve never noticed this with crows or ravens around here but it’s common to see that flash of weird blue and green on magpies.
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@leaverou wait, birds are tetrachromatic? Cool!
@jamesmarshall @leaverou Birds are tetrachromatic because their ancestors were larger carnivorous dinosaurs, they didn't lose their colour receptors because they were generally diurnal creatures. Mammals are mostly bichromatic (aside from a few exceptions like apes) because our ancestors were small burrowing creatures that couldn't go out during the day with all the big bird ancestors, so they only came out at night, as such our ancestors lost a large chunk of their unused colour vision.
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@marymessall @leaverou yes, thank you, I think it's about that. I'd enjoy a source to better understand all of this, and yes, ideally compare the colors curve of the bird with the human vision.
This page is a pretty decent explainer for human color vision... I'm afraid I don't have a link about birds. Maybe someone else will!
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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
@benroyce @jamesmarshall @leaverou
So, they see 10x the color data, they see it _without_ added tech, and why do I have a suspicion that they still get labeled as "inferior".
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@jamesmarshall @benroyce @leaverou I looked it up. Cool!
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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.
@leaverou I wonder if this applied to dinosaur perception of dinosaur feathers...
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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.
@leaverou more of this content pls
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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.
@leaverou @maudenificent the other thing that looks more interesting when you assign visible colours to invisible wavelengths – the universe as seen by radio telescopes.
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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
@benroyce I don’t like the word “superhuman” in the title. She is a human, isn’t she?
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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.
@leaverou The same applies to people. Don't deny your richness just because you're not understood for the time being.
