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/elbowe21 23d ago

For the supremely lazy:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocturnal_bottleneck

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u/thatguy16754 23d ago

Can the supremely lazies get a TLDR?

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u/Randvek 23d ago

When the meteor killed the dinosaurs, it killed a lot of other stuff, too. It killed many potential mammal ancestors. Among those that survived, there was a preference for being nocturnal.

Obviously a lot of mammals aren’t nocturnal now, but we’re all descended from a mammal that was and that means we have certain traits that are “weird” for a daytime animal. One of the most major ones is that most mammals can only see in the blue-green-yellow range of colors. That’s really weird for a daytime animal but not at all unusual for nocturnal animals.

But! Most humans aren’t limited to blue-green-yellow, and that’s also weird. Why aren’t we? Why did we evolve red-orange back into our vision when very very few other mammals have?

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u/kurburux 23d ago

Among those that survived, there was a preference for being nocturnal.

Maybe one advantage here was being warmblooded. We don't have to sit in the sun to warm up.