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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: 2) by EvilSS on Monday June 22 2020, @06:05PM (8 children)

    by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 22 2020, @06:05PM (#1011186)
    Because they can't see in IR.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @06:26PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @06:26PM (#1011194)

    They also tried a Spyder III Pro Arctic led on the birds. It didn't go well.

    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday June 22 2020, @06:48PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 22 2020, @06:48PM (#1011199) Journal

      Did the birds have suitable eye protection?

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday June 22 2020, @06:50PM (5 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 22 2020, @06:50PM (#1011200) Journal

    Because they can't see in IR.

    I assume then that they have established this as a fact, without testing it.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @10:54PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @10:54PM (#1011286)

      Millennial research... set your conclusions first, design experiment so data will match, discard data that still doesn't fit, publish.

    • (Score: 2) by EvilSS on Tuesday June 23 2020, @03:56PM (3 children)

      by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 23 2020, @03:56PM (#1011602)
      No, it's been tested and known for quite a long time. This research wasn't to see if the birds could see in UV, we already know they can. It was to see if they would distinguish non-spectral colors, some of which were composed of visible and UV components.
      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday June 23 2020, @05:18PM (2 children)

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 23 2020, @05:18PM (#1011645) Journal

        That makes sense. I didn't know whether the birds could see in IR, or whether the answer to that was even yet known. It makes sense that we would probably already know if birds can see IR -- and that the answer, from this series of messages, seems to be that they cannot.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
        • (Score: 2) by EvilSS on Tuesday June 23 2020, @07:56PM

          by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 23 2020, @07:56PM (#1011698)
          Nope, not birds. You might be thinking of Predators.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2020, @10:12PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2020, @10:12PM (#1011748)

          Snakes are the ones that "see" in infrared (but it's not really seeing, they have a special non-optical organ for it).