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A Different Form of Color Vision in Mantis Shrimp

Hanne H. Thoen, Martin J. How, Tsyr-Huei Chiou, Justin Marshall

2014 · Science

PsychologyAlgorithms
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From the abstract

One of the most complex eyes in the animal kingdom can be found in species of stomatopod crustaceans (mantis shrimp), some of which have 12 different photoreceptor types, each sampling a narrow set of wavelengths ranging from deep ultraviolet to far red (300 to 720 nanometers) ( 1 – 3 ). Functionally, this chromatic complexity has presented a mystery ( 3 – 5 ). Why use 12 color channels when three or four are sufficient for fine color discrimination? Behavioral wavelength discrimination tests (Δλ functions) in stomatopods revealed a surprisingly poor performance, ruling out color vision that makes use of the conventional color-opponent coding system ( 6 – 8 ). Instead, our experiments suggest that stomatopods use a previously unknown color vision system based on temporal signaling combined with scanning eye movements, enabling a type of color recognition rather than discrimination.

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3 selected excerpts · 3 total mentions

photochemsyn
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To generate a natural-color image of a biological sample using lasers in the human eye's visible light range, you'd need a great many lasers covering the entire frequency range. This generates hundreds of datasets at each particular wavelength (ignoring issues like laser-induced fluorescence, which can be managed with spectral filtering). The trick comes in taking all that data from the hundreds of images generated by different-wavelength lasers and assembling them layer-by-layer into an image the human brain interprets as color, aka colorimetric rendering, onto the three-color-cone system the eye's retina employs plus a bunch of neural processing (there's a complex…
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equation for this mapping of 'hyperspectral cube' data onto an RGB display for human visualization). There's a really strange example - the mantis shrimp - that used to be thought to have rich color vision in a narrow band, but now people think it might be a lot more direct, a kind of color vision without much neural processing involved, with each photoreceptor scanning slighty different wavelengths and directly signalling to the mantis brain, such as it is: Thoen et al. (2014) – "A different form of color vision in mantis shrimp" (Science) https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1245824
Original comment When Did Nature Burst into Vivid Color?
causi
Neutral mention · rule
the amazing mantis shrimp (see Figure 6) is thought to see the world in more colors than any other animal: some species of mantis shrimp have over 8 different photoreceptors (cones) Mantis shrimp actually have quite poor color vision despite their exotic equipment. https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.1245824?sid...
Original comment How do we see color?
bluishgreen
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"That other animals have more cone cells than humans, e.g. birds with four and shrimp with up to 16, and so probably see colors we can’t even conceive of which, yeah, that limitation of our minds is frustrating, but it also hints that there are huge unseen dark continents of qualia lurking out there which someday we might find a way to visit." This is based on a misunderstanding regarding the rise of qualia. It is processing power and not sensor capacity or at least both together in some combination with processing power doing the heavy lift. Humans have less cones but several OOM more neurons to make sense of what we have. So no - the shrimp doesn't see in spectacular color. Experimentally proved: https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2015/12/mantis-shrimp-... https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1245824
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