• Denvil@lemmy.one
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    8 months ago

    Is this how colors work? Would we not just end up with the same result, with the Shrimps just using their one receptor to sense it, and us using ours to blend it into the same color?

    Edit: thank you guys for the explanations

    • Tlaloc_Temporal
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      8 months ago

      We can both detect orange light, but the shrimp can also detect red light mixed with yellow light. We get tricked into also seeing orange, despite no strictly orange light being there.

      Think of it like sound. If we heard sound like we see light, we would hear a chord as identical to a tone somewhere in the middle of those notes. Mantis shrimp can see chords of light without any mixing, seeing both colours rather than just a colour somewhere in between.

    • assa123@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      8 months ago

      It is how color works given our particular limitations. RGB and CMY only work because of our eyes, not because of nature. If somehow we could extract the frequency spectrum of the light that reaches our eyes we could know the chemical composition of some things when burned, particularly of the sun. On the other side, we are tricked into believing our screens can produce all possible colors when in reality they can produce only three.