Photo filters will never be the same.
A new video camera built by a team of American and British scientists allows people to observe the world like animals do.
While humans have better eyesight than most animals, different species experience colors differently according to the photoreceptors in their eyes.
For example, certain birds can sense ultraviolet light that humans cannot see.
However, the new camera captures video in four color channels: blue, green, red, and ultraviolet, according to a report published in the PLOS Biology journal Tuesday.
The data is then processed to generate estimates of “perceivable units” for various species based on prior information about the photoreceptors in their eyes.
“This optical component reflects UV light in a mirror-like fashion, but allows visible light to pass through just the same way that clear glass does,” study authors Daniel Hanley, an associate professor of biology at George Mason University, and Vera Vasas, a biologist at 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 end product is a pipeline that allows viewers to “easily swap cameras, lenses, or visualize color appearance for a variety of animal viewers,” the authors noted.
The researchers released a series of films depicting how a bird sees a butterfly, a mouse sees a rainbow, a dog sees a peacock feather, and a honeybee sees someone applying sunscreen.
“We have long been captivated by how animals see the world. Modern sensory ecology approaches allow us to predict how static settings would appear to an animal; nonetheless, animals frequently make critical decisions on moving objects (e.g., detecting food, evaluating a possible mate’s presentation, etc.),” Hanley noted 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 released their methodologies and software codes in the hopes of motivating others to replicate the camera using widely accessible components.
“We believe that this will accelerate development for everyone’s benefit,” Hanley and Vasas reportedly stated.
“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 team said.
“Only now that we started taking videos of the natural world, we are beginning to see how much information is out there.”