Reading this article made me think about how the world might look completely different to a bird than it does to do. Just because their reality is different would be call it an altered consciousness? And if so is that something a human should aspire to achieve - see the world as the bird sees it. Maybe there is a reason nature intended for us to see things muted and not quite as colorful - we likely have less ability to process the sensory stimulation than the bird does. Maybe given time, humans will achieve bird-like vision and the serenity needed to deal with what they see if full, resplendent color.
Scientists have speculated for years on how birds obtained their colors, but the Yale/Cambridge study was the first to ask what the diversity of bird colors actually look like to birds themselves. Ironically, the answer is that birds see many more colors than humans can, but birds are also capable of seeing many more colors than they have in their plumage. Birds have additional color cones in their retina that are sensitive to ultraviolet range so they see colors that are invisible to humans.
Over time, birds have evolved a dazzling combination of colors that included various melanin pigments, which give human skin its tint, carotenoid pigments, which come from their diets, and structural colors, like the blue eyes of humans. The study shows that the structural colors produce the lion’s share of color diversity to bird feathers, even though they are relatively rare among birds.
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