Sometimes I think about how beautiful the world is. I feel blessed to live on such a beautiful planet and to have eyes that allow me to witness that beauty. The human eye contains four different photoreceptors: rods that detect the presence of light (i.e allow us to see in black and white and detect movement) and three types of cones that allow us to see in colour. Each cone type detects a different colour - red, green or blue. All the colours we see are the result of different combinations of those cones being stimulated simultaneously by the light entering the eyes. As humans, our eyesight is one of our more developed senses - one that we rely heavily on each day, or at least I know I do. Yet,
Louie Schwartzburg compares our visual range to a single octave of the musical scale.
Many animals have the capacity to see light frequencies we cannnot. For example, honey bees can see ultraviolet, and many flowers have patterns on their petals that are not visible to the naked human eye that become visible under ultraviolet light, that aid bees in locating nectar and pollen. We already admire flowers for their beauty, but imagine being able to see the
additional beauty visible to the bees. But there is one creature that makes me marvel even more at its visual capabilities...
The Mantis Shrimp
This shrimp-like creature is not actually a shrimp, but a group of crustaceans belonging to the Order Stromatopoda. They are predatory creatures found in shallow tropical and sub-tropical seas around the world. The mantis shrimp is noteworthy for several reasons, including its viciousness and strength, its complex signaling behaviours and its extraordinary eyesight.
The eye of the mantis shrimp has at least 16 different photoreceptors, of which 12-13 are cones for detecting colour. Moreover, they are capable of seeing polarised light. If the world looks as amazing as it does through our human eyes, imagine how amazing it would look through the eyes of the mantis shrimp...
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