Unique camera enables researchers to see how avian eyes see far more than humans do
Swedish researchers have recreated how birds see the world using a special camera.
The 'birds eye view' reveals just how different a bird's view of the world is.
While human colour vision is based on three primary colours: red, green and blue, birds can also see ultraviolet.
This, the images reveal, allows them to see foliage in stunning detail, for example.
'What appears to be a green mess to humans are clearly distinguishable leaves for birds,' said Dan-Eric Nilsson, professor at the Department of Biology at Lund University.
'No one knew about this until this study',
For birds, the upper sides of leaves appear much lighter in ultraviolet.
From below, the leaves are very dark.
In this way the three-dimensional structure of dense foliage is obvious to birds.
This in turn makes it easy for them to move, find food and navigate.
People, on the other hand, do not perceive ultraviolet, and see the foliage in green; the primary color where contrast is the worst.
The project is the first time that researchers have succeeded in imitating bird colour vision with a high degree of precision.
to create the images, they built a special camera equipped with rotating filter wheels and specially manufactured filters, which make it possible to show what different animals see clearly.
In this case, the camera imitates with a high degree of accuracy the colour sensitivity of the four different types of cones in bird retinas.
'We have discovered something that is probably very important for birds, and we continue to reveal how reality appears also to other animals', says Dan-Eric Nilsson, continuing:
'We may have the notion that what we see is the reality, but it's a highly human reality.
'Other animals live in other realities, and we can now see through their eyes and reveal many secrets.
'Reality is in the eye of the beholder'.
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