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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)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @11:51PM (1 child)
Insects and reptiles have been known to have (at least) 4 color receptor types that cover a wider spectrum than human eyes for a good while.
Our early mammal ancestors lost 2 of the receptors probably because they were nocturnal and relied mostly on sound and smell. Simians eventually gained a 3rd receptor, but it was never as good as the original, being spaced poorly in the spectrum. Human color vision is an evolutionary hack.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2020, @03:19AM
Have you met many computer hackers?