Study proposes explanation for how cephalopods see color, despite black and white vision
For years, camera-makers have sought ways to avoid chromatic aberration—the color fringes that occur when various wavelengths of light focus at different distances behind a lens.
But where photographers see a problem, some sea creatures see possibility.
A new study, co-authored by the father and son team of Christopher and Alexander Stubbs, suggests that chromatic aberration may explain how cephalopods—the class of animals that includes squid, octopi and cuttlefish—can demonstrate such remarkable camouflage abilities despite only being able to see in black and white. The study is described in a July 4, 2016 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Article:
http://phys.org/news/2016-07-explanation-cephalopods-black-white-vision.html
Study:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/07/01/1524578113
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This is a beautiful piece of deduction. Arguably, saying they only have b&w vision is like saying we only have 2d vision: in both cases we generate rich information from cheap sensors by post-processing. Cephalopod eyes rock. One neat thing is that rods are much more sensitive than cones, so they have much better efficiency than we do. The other is that their retinae are designed right-side-out, unlike our backwards ones, with their rods right up on the surface, which also greatly increases their efficiency. (I think I remember we only have about 10% efficiency because of our retinal absorption.) Awesome bit of work by evolution, throughout.
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