How can we observe if an object is a color we can’t see?

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From what I understand, humans can see red green and blue and everything in the middle. Some animals I’ve heard see more colors than us, so what’s to say that some things in nature are colors that we don’t see? Who’s to say that some apples are red? And instead a different color that we don’t have a name for because we can’t process it?

How can we tell if this “apple” is as a matter of fact “red”.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Many flowers and some animals (including humans) actually have interesting patterns in ultraviolet.

Just because an object reflects light we can’t see doesn’t mean it doesn’t also reflect light we can see. A flower may be blue to us for example, but blue with ultraviolet spots to a bee.

As for things which reflect only colors we can’t see- glass is one. It reflects a fair amount of ultraviolet light, so we can see straight through it but something which can only see ultraviolet would not be able to see through glass very well. It would only be semi-transparent to them.

As for absolutes- the wavelengths of light are absolute, but our interpretation of them is almost entirely subjective. Red is red because we have decided it is red. Physically it is light with a particular wavelength which interacts with the cone cells in your eyes a particular way.

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