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posted by chromas on Monday June 22 2020, @03:27PM   Printer-friendly
from the bird-in-hand-is-worth-4278190080-extra-colors dept.

Experiments show hummingbirds see colors you’ve never dreamed of:

The “V” in “ROYGBIV” stands for violet, sure, but that’s not actually the same thing as purple. There is no purple wavelength of light—it requires a mixture of both red and blue wavelengths. That makes it a “nonspectral color”—in fact, it's the only non spectral color humans see. It requires our brains to interpret signals from both red-sensitive and blue-sensitive cones in our eyes and to see that as a separate color.

[...] Working in Colorado over several summers, the researchers set up a pair of feeders for their experiments—one containing that delicious sugar water and one just containing boring old water. On top of each was a special LED light containing UV, blue, red, and green LEDs behind a diffuser, allowing the researchers to light up the feeder in a variety of nonspectral colors.

[...] The tests showed that the birds could see every nonspectral color that the researchers threw at them. Color pairs that were closer together in hue resulted in more mistaken visits but still beat the 50/50 odds of the control experiments.

Journal Reference:
Mary Caswell Stoddard, Harold N. Eyster, Benedict G. Hogan, et al. Wild hummingbirds discriminate nonspectral colors [$], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1919377117)


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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Monday June 22 2020, @05:07PM (3 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 22 2020, @05:07PM (#1011167) Journal

    Brown is indeed another non spectral color that humans can see.

    I was going to bring that up. Brown is low brightness Orange.

    What about Pink? Red at low saturation and high brightness.

    Our vision evolved this way probably because brown is so prevalent in nature.

    As for Purple, Pink and Brown, aren't there examples of these "colors" in nature. Purple and Pink flowers? Brown animals, tree bark, dirt, etc.

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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday June 22 2020, @07:00PM (1 child)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 22 2020, @07:00PM (#1011205) Journal

    If I offended anyone by saying Pink, I apologize for my insensitivity. I should have said Fuschia. [wikipedia.org]

    Soon to be Google Fuschia. [wikipedia.org]

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    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday June 22 2020, @08:11PM

      by krishnoid (1156) on Monday June 22 2020, @08:11PM (#1011224)

      That way they can trademark it too, since the color's spelled differently. Ingenious!

  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2020, @03:15AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2020, @03:15AM (#1011412)

    Brown is low brightness Orange.

    So... orange man bad?