That might not be true. They have more receptors for color but tests indicated that they are worse at differentiating colors than humans or other animals. They could only differentiate wavelength of 25 nanometers apart while humans can do it between 1-5 nano meters.
Also being able to see a wider spectrum might be terrible with all the light we use in electronics.
Compared with the three types of photoreceptor cell that humans possess in their eyes, the eyes of a mantis shrimp have between 12 and 16 types of photoreceptor cells. Furthermore, some of these shrimp can tune the sensitivity of their long-wavelength colour vision to adapt to their environment.
Not sure what it would make the world around me look like but I would love to find out.
They probably can’t see colour very well though. They may have more receptors but they can’t mix those as well as humans so it’s a bit like looking at an 8 bit game with some new colours. Also the resolution of their eyes is abysmal. Birds have one receptor more (UV) and really sharp vision. That’s where it’s at imo.
Yeah but a mantis shrimp’s eyes wired up to a human’s brain would be neat because our brains are more powerful and therefore could probably make better sense of the inputs than a shrimp’s.
in the magic land where suddenly you had mantis shrimp vision and everything else being equal you’d probably just see stuff more or less the same, but probably wouldn’t be able to see coherent information from screens as they are designed to work with human (and recently by proxy) mammalian eyesight (i still don’t think cats and dogs can parse images from CRT displays but they seem to do just fine with LCDs, but that’s just anecdotal… like my entire comment)
I’d like to be able to hear like a bat. There’s so much of the sound spectrum we normally don’t perceive and it’d also be cool to experience their echolocation.
Humans are surprisingly good at echolocation.
For example, with your eyes closed, hold your arm out with your palm facing your face and make a droning noise while bringing your palm towards your face.
Now try making a 'click' noise while facing inches away from a wall. Now try the 'click' in a hallway.
There's a blind guy named Daniel Kish who rides a bike using echolocation. He teaches this stuff to people through an organization called world access for the blind.
I would also like to hear like a bat.
I feel like if your hearing was good enough to hear people’s heartbeats you would have a much better understanding of their mood, emotions etc. I imagine when people say that animals can “smell fear” or similar, this is actually what’s going on. Likewise you’d probably also hear everyone’s digestion so that might be a bit gross.
I’m sure it’s a quite different experience, but there are people whohave gotten magnets implanted under their skin in order to feel magnetic field.
I’m not quite ready for that myself, but I did do a little experiment my supergluing some tiny neodymium magnets to my fingernails. I suspect the implants are probably more sensitive since they better able to wiggle around but I could feel some things. The forklift charger and pencil sharpener I had at work got probably the strongest responses I noticed for the week or so I had them.
I also got really used to picking up paperclips and such with them really quick, I caught myself trying to do it now and then for probably about a month after I no longer had the magnets.
I read an article years ago about a guy who put magnetic sensors and vibrator motors in his belt so that every time he turned, the north side of him would buzz. Apparently after a while, he stopped noticing, and just “knew” which way was north.
Somewhat related to that, certain Australian aboriginal languages don’t have words for relative directions like left/right and use cardinal directions (north/south/east/west) so they tend to keep track of their orientation subconsciously.
So if you were to help one of them, for example, move a couch, they might tell you to move your end a bit to the west and avoid any “my left or your left?/No your other left” shenanigans.
Probably also a very helpful thing to be aware of if you find yourself trying to navigate the outback.
Sharks and other bony fish have something called Ampulle of Lorenzini that let them detect electrical signals in the water. it can also detect electromagnetic signals and possibly temperature differences as well. I always thought it would be cool to be able to sense electromagnetic fields. It would probably be overwhelming though TBH
I hadn’t even considered the degree of finesse one could develop until you mentioned a router. Feeling a text vs a call, diagnosing an issue with an electric motor by proximity, instantly noticing loose wiring, feeling when malware begins spinning up processes, etc..
Our eyes are not ideal for living in air. They’re fish eyes that adapted over and over so they work well-enough in the air. I want to know what a purpose built air eye would be like.
If they were air filled, which would the best for refraction/distortion avoidance, how would the air get in there? Eye vents would be problematic when swimming.
Our eyes are pretty good at working in air though. The only thing that makes them fish like is that they have to stay moisturised really. I doubt that filling them with air would do much, we could maybe get rid of floaters though. The dumbest thing about our eyes is that they’re inverted with nerves and blood vessels being in front of the receptor cells so I’m wondering how much they’d improve if they were properly constructed like in squid.
Yeah, my eyes are not great. If robotic eyes get developed in my lifetime and could work, and maybe see more than mine do (night vision mode, sunglass mode, other sorts of settings to see things my eyes can’t) I would be an early adopter.
Our vitreous fluid has an almost identical refractive index to sea water, so anything we look at not in sea water is distorted to some degree and our brains have to fix it. They do a good job, but it could be a lot better.
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