I just had an idea, I want to know what something without colour cools like. I remember some animals/sea animals have abilities to see more colour and I wonder what it’s like in reverse
In: Physics
The short answer: It looks weird to us, but it works because it still enables some very precise vision. There are fewer colors seen, some are more vibrant than we’re used to, and the rest is muted.
If we look at humans as having “typical” vision, that means we can see visible light ranging from violet to red. That’s pretty incredible, really. How many colors is that? Depends on how you’re counting, but the answer is going to be 1-100 million colors, all because of two basic types of cells in your eyes: rod cells, which are very basic, low-light cells responsible for allowing us to see in very dim conditions; and cone cells, which allow us to see colors. Since we can see and tell red, green, and blue apart, we can see all the colors of the RGB spectrum.
What happens, though, if you drop one of those cells? Say, the red one? You lose the ability to see red, and colors that contain red change in appearance. We call this *colorblindness*, and it’s not uncommon among humans. Colorblind people can still see just fine in most cases, but the colors they see look very strange to people who aren’t. Someone who is red-green colorblind, the most common type, can see blue just fine. But green and red don’t work as well, turning into a sort of muddy yellow color. Dogs are, compared to us, red-green colorblind. So that bright red ball really fades into the grass (they’re both a wonky yellow-brown) which is why your dog might lose track of it sometimes. A blue or purple ball would be the most visible to a dog.
Complete colorblindness means you can only see light versus dark. In that case (which is very rare condition called achromatopsia), you see no colors whatsoever, and the entire world looks like a black-and-white photo or movie. You can still see, and you can tell one color from another if they’re different enough (they’ll be different shades of grey), but you usually won’t know what those colors are unless someone who isn’t colorblind tells you.
On the other side of things, some animals can see beyond the normal visible light spectrum of violet to red. Bees, for example, can see ultraviolet light. What does that look like? There’s really no way to describe it since we as humans don’t have that ability, but the best way would be to say it adds a filter. When you look at a flower, you see pretty colors. Bees, however, can see more markings and details that make the flower more visually distinct and attractive. At the same time, though, bees really can’t see red very well at all.
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