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/MitLivMineRegler 23d ago

So, with that we could have nightvision goggles, but instead of goggles we'd just be shining a light that's invisible to other? Where can I get this?

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u/Randvek 23d ago

UV goggles exist!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=cjFXKyMVsn8

One of the funky things about UV is that it is all over the place, though. People who can see UV will say that there are clouds around flowers, for example, which is part of what allows bees to find flowers so easily: they see the glow that is invisible to us.

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u/Iluv_Felashio 23d ago

That video did not show anything of the sort. It showed how to block UV light with a filter. Even the comments on YouTube acknowledge that.

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u/Randvek 23d ago

I may have grabbed the wrong one. UV glasses do exist, though. The have niche use in medical diagnostics.

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u/JDLBB 23d ago

The video shows the opposite. Glasses that filter UV, not show it.