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Do birds see the colour white at all?

We all know there are lots of birds that have white wings.  Recently, many bird species have been proven to be tetrachromatic i.e. they have cone opsins able to absorb at UV wavelengths and so can discriminate ultraviolet light as well.  Does this mean that they cannot see white?

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Categories: Animals.

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Jon-Richfield says:

We obviously cannot answer for ow others see colour, but in the simple sense of white being a mix of photons of light that stimulate our different colour sensors about equally strongly, there is no reason for polychromats of any degree to fail to see white, even though polychromats that differ in their visual pigments might disagree about which mixtures of light would look white.

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posted on 2010-10-03 21:14:06 | Report abuse


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