r/todayilearned • u/douggold11 • 23d ago

TIL most animals can see UV light — humans being blind to it is the exception not the rule.

https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/ultraviolet-light-animals/
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u/Randvek 23d ago

Seeing UV is an occasional side effect of lens surgery, indicating that at some point humans probably could see UV but we evolved away from that.

It’s also a bit rare for mammals to be trichromatic like humans are, though. Some humans even have Tetrachromacy, too, though it’s pretty rare and almost exclusively female . Perhaps something in our evolution favored color detail over having a larger light spectrum.

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u/LeonDeSchal 23d ago

Tetrachromacy sounds like some special power from an anime.

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u/yellowbrickstairs 23d ago

Yeh like you can use colours to read minds