Photo filters will never be the same.
A new video camera invented by a team of American and British scientists allows people to view the world how animals see it.
While humans have sharper vision than most animals, different species see colors differently because of the capabilities of the photoreceptors in their eyes.
For example, some birds can see ultraviolet light which is outside the range of human perception.
But the new camera records video in four color channels: blue, green, red and ultraviolet, according to a paper published in the PLOS Biology journal Tuesday.
The data is then processed into estimates of “perceivable units” for different animals, based on existing knowledge of the photoreceptors in their eyes.
compared to how a human would (inset). Daniel Hanley / SWNS
“This optical component reflects UV light in a mirror-like fashion, but allows visible light to pass through just the same way as clear glass does,” study authors Daniel Hanley, an associate professor of biology at George Mason University, and Vera Vasas, a biologist at the Queen Mary University of London told Gizmodo.
“In this way the system can capture light simultaneously from four distinct wavelength regions: ultraviolet, blue, green, and red.”
The result is a pipeline that allows viewers to “easily swap cameras, lenses, or to visualize color appearance for a variety of animal viewers,” the scientists wrote.
The researchers published a series of videos that showed how a bird sees a butterfly, how a mouse sees a rainbow, how a dog sees a peacock feather, or how a honeybee sees a person applying sunscreen.
“We’ve long been fascinated by how animals see the world. Modern techniques in sensory ecology allow us to infer how static scenes might appear to an animal; however, animals often make crucial decisions on moving targets (e.g., detecting food items, evaluating a potential mate’s display, etc.),” Hanley explained in a press release.
“Here, we introduce hardware and software tools for ecologists and filmmakers that can capture and display animal-perceived colors in motion.”
The scientists also shared their methods and software codes in the hope of inspiring others to replicate the camera, with parts that are all commercially available.
“We believe that this will speed up the development, to everyone’s benefit,” Hanley and Vasas reportedly said.
“We have a number of ideas that we are planning to address with our camera, but the most exciting questions will be those we have yet to consider,” the scientists continued.
“Only now that we started taking videos of the natural world, we are beginning to see how much information is out there.”