Perhaps at some point in your life you have questioned whether other human beings have a vision of reality exactly the same as yours. That is to say, we are of the same species and we are constituted under the same mold, our eyes are very similar. But this does not guarantee that the view we have is exactly the same as that of others. Now translate that scenario to other species, whose physical makeup varies so much from ours. It is to be expected to find scenarios very different from what our eyes allow us to see and science confirms it. The sight of hummingbirds has a great chromatic capacitythey are able to see colors that humans cannot even imagine.
The The human eye has about 110 million cells called cones.. In humans there are three types of cones, each capable of capturing different light spectrums: red, green and blue. This is the system known as trichromatism that allows us to distinguish approximately close to a million different tonalities. Although of course this varies from person to person, since sight not only depends on the eyes, but also on the interpretation of the brain.
But as expected, other species have evolved from their needs to survive. And eyesight plays an important role when it comes to survival. Bees, for example, are also trichromatic, but unlike our eyes, their cones capture ultraviolet, blue, and green light. That is why they live immersed in an ultraviolet world full of objects that seem to flash all the time.
How is the hummingbird view?
Hummingbirds, for their part, have taken their sight to an even broader level. They have a tetrachromatic system in their eyes, made up of four types of cells specialized in capturing light. For this reason, they are capable of distinguishing a wide range of colors, including non-spectral ones. So not only are they able to visually distinguish ultraviolet light, but they also see colors that humans can’t even imagine.
An investigation by the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University concluded that Hummingbirds’ sight is essential for signaling and foraging. Other types of birds also have tetrachromatic systems in their eyes and are even believed to have existed in dinosaurs.
“This color vision system is the norm in birds, some fish and reptiles, and it almost certainly existed in dinosaurs. We believe that the ability to perceive many colors outside the spectrum (visible to humans) is not just an ability of hummingbirds, but a general feature of animal color vision,» explains Stoddard, leader of the research.
And here we can highlight the fact that birds need to travel long distances without getting lost. Albert Einstein himself theorized about bird migrations and already in his time thought that sight would play a fundamental role in their sense of orientation. In conclusion, reality is not what we look at or at least it is not the same reality for all living beings, much less for all species.
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