Yeup, my OC, Celestina, is a hybrid of an avian derived humanoid race. Not only does she not possess a lung structure like we know it (non inflating lungs combined with air sacs), but she also interprets color and depth far differently than what we can understand it. Her species can fly, so superb vision is a must.

Rey Roo can see the full color spectrum . he can even see minor colors that human eyes can't.

I know a number of people who have characters who can see into the ultraviolet or infrared, but after reading this article, it's made me more curious as to how many people have actually used that in some interesting way. For example, markings that cannot be seen outside the normal colors of the rainbow. Perhaps a gambler/hustler who uses a deck of cards marked in a way that the markings cannot be seen by anyone limited to trichromatic vision.

Similarly, a range of hearing that might allow two individuals to fully communicate beyond what say, a human can hear; making it appear as if they were using telepathy to communicate with one another.

Theres a lot to Rey Roo that mpst earyh furs wouldn't understand.

For a treatment of the hearing thing, the award winning story Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper had the fuzzies communicating in the ultrasonic range. It was only a side point to the story though.

Heh. Something the differentiates the professional writers from those who just do it for fun, are those types of details that are thought out and scientifically feasible; especially when it's not even a main aspect of the story.

How about mice?

Most mammals, mice included, only have 2 color receptors (primates have 3), making them similar to people who are color blind and do not perceive all of the colors a normal human eye can see.

However, experiments have been done where mice were given a gene that gave them a 3rd receptor. The brains of these mice appear to have immediately adapted to having 3 color receptors and allowing them to see the same spectrum as humans. This suggests that it was a single mutation which paved the way for primates to have trichromatic vision, and that is has nothing to do with the size of the brain, but merely the number of receptors in the eye.

It also makes one wonder if and when such a genetic mutation will be given to a human, allowing them to see as birds do.

Coooooool

How about infrared and microwave wavelengths? I wonder if it's biologically possible and at which price.

Look at the city skyline at night, and woooo - all those radio emitters, totally psychedelic.

That sounds wonderfully trippy. Though if you can't turn it off, I imagine going insane after a while as well. *laughs*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3RjROg9u1g

Turn your room party into a dancefloor, just hang the WiFi router on the ceiling fan. X3

Nice. And yeah, if that was all in motion, rather than still pictures, I can easily imagine that driving someone insane, once the initial, hypnotic high wore off. :D

One interesting thing that makes me think of, that might be trade off, is that there are two different visual receptors, one for colors, the other for light - this is why you can still see shapes at night, but it's difficult to discern colors.
Would access to a broader color spectrum lead to decreased night vision, or vise versa?

An interesting thought, though I have no idea. The ability to see at night, as compared to discerning colors, depends on the ratio of rods to cones in the eye.

In the human eye, there are about 120 million rods, and only 6 to 7 million cones. The cones are what see color. So, if the color receptors are divided equally between the 3 color receptors, we're talking about 2 million each. So, adding an additional 2 million cones should not really require much of a difference to the quantity of rods.

Given this, I would imagine that having 4 different color receptors would not affect night vision. But that's just my guess on the matter. I haven't actually researched that, nor do I know what the actual ration between rods and cones might be, in these birds.

I suppose owls and nocturnal birds probably have good night vision, and the innate color vision of Avians.
Most of my research has been done on the night vision of nocturnal mammals. A lot of them actually have a fluid in their eyes that increases the reflectivity of light (which is why you'll see some animals eyes "glowing" at night when the light hits them right).
Ive also heard that cats, although they have excellent night vision, don't have very good color vision or a very far focus ( near sighted compared to 20/20). Ive not confirmed this with my own research yet, so I don't know how accurate it is
; take that last bit with a grain of salt.

This all just makes me wish that eye transplants were a possibility, as I'd love to see what it was like to have such vision. :)

An interesting fact about 20/20 vision, is that I read an article about 6 months or so ago, where it was stated that normal human vision used to be 20/15, before reading became a common activity. We've now spent generations, spending more and more time with our eyes focusing on a short distance, that our normal vision has actually deteriorated to 20/20.

They didn't go into the genetics of it, so I don't know what actually changed in the eye to cause this to happen; but it is another interesting factoid to learn about. Of course, I'll take the slightly lower vision, for the ability to read and learn such information. :)

Well the misconception about 20/20 is that it's "perfect" when it's actually just "average" (lime scoring a B on a test - it's good, most people score it, but it's still not an A)
From my own understanding, anyway, 20/20 means that what the AVERAGE person sees at 20 feet, you can see at 20 feet. 20/40 means that what the average person sees at 40 feet, you have to move up to 20 feet to see in the same quality. 20/10 means what the average person sees at ten feet, you can see from 20 feet.

What you were saying about deteriorating vision makes sense, because 20/10 is considered "perfect"

That's my understanding of it, anyway.

Haha, this is something I admittedly don't think about much for my birds...but my, it must be such a fascinating world for our avian friends! Though, when all's said and done, rodents still appear as tasty snacks, no matter the visual range. ;>

LOL. I'm going to have to get some special, UV dyes and paint scary faces on my fur that only birds can see.

Very interesting thought!

That deserves some thinking about! Perhaps Raptdragons arent as grey and dull looking as you might think :3

Heh. That's definitely something interesting to consider with normally drab colorations. :)

Most interesting article. Give some perspective to my red-green color blindness...

Things like this just always fascinate me, where no matter how much we seem to know, we're always learning something new. Yes, we've known about the infrared and ultraviolet ranges of light for ages now, but how many of us ever really tried to imagine just how someone might see in that range, and how it would actually affect the way we see even the normal rainbow range of color.

It makes me wonder how everyone else sees colors that just look muddy brown to me.

AWESOME Article! Thanks for sharing!

Nice to hear some attention given to the flexibility, adaptability, and especially sensitivity of non-human creatures. Entirely too many characters are created and written as humans in different bodies.

Add in some hardwired instincts or even species-specific social cues, and it takes someone REALLY imaginative to pack all the details into a character/story. Neat stuff though!


...also, yeah. What VN735 said... plus, since birds have such great vision, what gives with the obnoxiously LOUD chirping that starts at ungodly early hours in the morning?

How about red-eyed rats? I heard they can't see well, unlike the black-eyed ones. Actually, my albino rat moves funny when she's trying to look at something, she looks drunk.

Like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc9OJ13rltk