See how birds see the much more colorful world

If we previously knew little about the senses of animals, today we have a lot of information about them, especially the sight. In recent years, scientists have found that the diversity of ways of seeing the world is immense. Dragonflies, for example, have a brain so fast that they view the world in slow motion, and horses and zebras have their eyes in that shape to escape predators faster. However, no animal has a view as interesting as birds.

The megavision of the birds

Several birds have vision almost as a superpower of heroes. For example, one species of Hawaiian bird, the Palila, feeds on extremely poisonous seeds that kill other small animals. Pigeons are not the most beloved birds in the world, but they can recognize colors better than any other species on the planet, so they are often used in rescues.

While humans can see three color spectra, birds are able to identify four: blue, green, red and ultraviolet. This last spectrum is not captured by the human eye.

Studies prove this difference between human and animal vision

In 2007, a team of scientists conducted research with the help of a spectrophotometer (a device that measures the amount of light absorbed, reflected or transmitted by an object) to analyze 166 species of US birds. From a human perspective, 92% of species, males and females, were identical. But what the study found was that these birds see colors that only other birds could detect.

For example, the species Icteria virens appears to human eyes as a bird with bluish and yellow feathers. Already in the bird's view, females have an immense amount of colors that only they see. To support this theory, another study has placed a stuffed male and female of this species in the wild to see what the reaction of living specimens would be like. The result was that the male was attacked by others while the female was courted. This proved that the birds saw something scientists could not see, as in the eyes of the researchers both stuffed birds looked identical.