What colors can mantis shrimp even see? Having 16 different cones doesn't mean anything if they're all slightly different variations of green, for example.

Edit: Okay, they can see more colors that us. They can see 300 nm to 720 nm and we can see 400 nm to 700 nm.

[–] mhague@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago

I think your question was spot on. They have more cones but they seem worse. They also lack our ability to process the stimuli into a rich tapestry of color.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24458639/

Not sure if there's more current info though.

[–] AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

Just the span of wavelengths isn't the only thing that's important, the spectral resolution is also important. For example, theoretically with 6 different cones we would be able to tell the difference between the mixture of red and green wavelengths vs only seeing yellow wavelengths.

Or the mixture of blue and red wavelengths vs violet wavelengths, which just happen to be at the furthest possible point from the red wavelengths. Human color perception is strange.