鸟类和人类相比是如何看待这个世界的

这就是鸟类和人类相比是如何看待这个世界的，这很神奇

For many years, people were in the dark about how other animals see. Thankfully, recent scientific research has revealed an amazing world of vision diversity across the animal kingdom. For example, a dragonfly’s brain works so fast that it sees movements in slow motion, snakes pick up infrared heat signals from warm objects, thus detecting their prey, whereas horses and zebras have eyes pointed sideways, enabling them to have peripheral vision and escape danger when necessary. In addition to this, insects use compound eyes that are made of thousands of tiny lenses that look like a honeycomb pattern. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that animals are diverse in their vision, but one species in the animal kingdom stands out the most – birds.

多年来，人们对其他动物如何看东西一无所知。值得庆幸的是，最近的科学研究已经揭示了动物王国中一个惊人的视觉多样性的世界。例如，蜻蜓的大脑工作速度非常快，它可以看到慢动作;蛇从温暖的物体上接收红外热信号，从而探测到它们的猎物;而马和斑马的眼睛是斜向一边的，这使它们能够有外围视觉，在必要的时候躲避危险。除此之外，昆虫的复眼是由成千上万个看起来像蜂窝状的小透镜组成的。因此，动物在视觉上的多样性不足为奇，但动物王国里最突出的一个物种——鸟类脱颖而出。

Image credits: Ian Glover

Birds are bizarre creatures when you really look into them. For example, did you know that penguins can only recognize salty and sour tastes? Or that Palila birds, native to Hawaii, feed on the seeds of the māmane plant, which contain a level of toxins that would easily kill any other small animal? Or that pigeons are thought to be best at color detection than any animal on Earth and are often used in search and rescue missions? Various avians have different superpowers and different ways of working their sensations, but one thing is true for most birds – their superior (in comparison to humans) vision.

当你仔细观察鸟类时，你会发现它们是一种奇怪的生物。例如，你知道企鹅只能分辨咸味和酸味吗?或者Palila鸟,产于夏威夷,以māmane植物的种子为食,含有一定的毒素,可以轻易地杀死其他的小动物吗?或者鸽子被认为是地球上最擅长识别颜色的动物，经常被用于搜索和救援任务?不同的鸟类有不同的超能力和不同的感知方式，但有一件事对大多数鸟类来说是真实的——它们的视觉(与人类相比)更优越。

Image credits: Klaus Schmitt

The graphic compares the human spectral range to the bird’s. As birds are tetrachromats, they see four colors: UV, blue, green and red, whereas we are trichromats and can only see three colors: blue, green, red. Bear in mind, that the magenta UV “color” shown here has been chosen to make it visible for us humans, it is a “false color”, as per definition UV light has no color.

这张图表比较了人类和鸟类的光谱范围。因为鸟类是四色视者，它们能看到四种颜色:紫外线、蓝色、绿色和红色，而我们是三色视者，只能看到三种颜色:蓝色、绿色、红色。请记住，这里所显示的紫红色紫外线“颜色”是为了使它对我们人类可见，它是一种“假颜色”，因为紫外线的定义是没有颜色的。

Image credits: Cynthia Tedore

Joe Smith, an ornithologist, explains that birds have the amazing ability to see a whole spectrum of colors that are invisible to us, people. Back in 2007, scientists, with the help of a spectrophotometer, analyzed the colors of 166 North American songbird species which did not have an apparent physical difference between the sexes. From a human’s perspective, in 92 percent of species, both males and females look identical. However, the study showed that these birds have colors that are simply undetectable by our eye that they differentiate their genders by.

鸟类学家乔·史密斯(Joe Smith)解释说，鸟类有一种惊人的能力，能看到人类看不见的整个光谱的颜色。2007年，科学家在分光光度计的帮助下，分析了166种北美鸣鸟的颜色，这些鸣鸟在性别上没有明显的生理差异。从人类的角度来看，在92%的物种中，雄性和雌性看起来都是一样的。然而，研究表明，这些鸟的颜色是我们肉眼根本无法察觉的，它们通过颜色来区分性别。

Image credits: Joel Sartore

So for example, the male Yellow-breasted Chat has a yellow breast (pretty obvious), but its potential mates or rivals also see ultraviolet feathers on his chest that set him apart from the females of the species. The theory was again proven in another study in which scientists placed taxidermied male and female Chats in the wild to see how their living counterparts would react. Males stayed true to their territorial nature and attacked the stuffed male Chats and tried winning over the taxidermied females. Thus, they obviously were seeing something that the researchers couldn’t.

例如，雄性黄胸海雀的胸部是黄色的(很明显)，但它潜在的配偶或竞争对手也能在它的胸部看到紫外线羽毛，这使它与同类的雌性区别开来。这一理论在另一项研究中再次得到了证实。在这项研究中，科学家们将野生动物标本中的雄性动物和雌性动物放在一起，观察它们活着的同类会有什么反应。雄性则坚守自己的领地本性，攻击雄性填充标本，并试图赢得雌性标本。因此，他们显然看到了一些研究人员看不到的东西。

Image credits: unknown

More info: Cynthia Tedore