Can mantis shrimp actually see MORE colours than what we think exist or can they just pick up on different colours/colour differences more easily than us?
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You’re thinking of this way way way in a wrong way. Each color is just wavelengths of light that we describe. It’s a question of photoreceptors being sensitive to different wavelengths of light. This is why cameras can see stripes on animals that we see as solid colors because we’re just not sensitive to those particular wavelenghts but the camera was and once it’s shifted the light to something we can see as an output then we can see it. Mantis Shrimp have simple receptors that work on wavelenghts that some do not match our own. They don’t see ‘more colors’ that we know of, but they do see DIFFERENT wavelengths of light than what our receptors are. Mind you our receptors are also MUCH more sophisticated than a lot of other animals. We can see a very broad range with rather minimal differences in the photoreceptors that we use. A lot of other animals have more specialized receptors that react to lower ranges but many include things we just can’t see.
We can’t actually test is they see in ‘color’ like we do either. We know what light stimulates the cells, but now how their brain interprets the signal that flashes up. It’s very likely that we see a much more ‘high color’ image with our increased brain capacity and how much of it is stimulated by our eyes being exposed to different rages of light.
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