7 ms·
When Did Nature Burst into Vivid Color?
- osigurdson 1y ago>> Plant leaves, for example, reflect green light even if there are no eyes to see it It seems that the logical colour for a leaf would be completely black - absorbing all energy. Fortunately that isn't how it worked out.
- hoseja 1y agoUnder a thick canopy it basically is like that.
- osigurdson 1y agoThat would be true for mirror leaves as well.
- firesteelrain 1y agoWell then leaves would get too hot and plants can’t absorb unlimited sun They need to absorb red and blue light
- osigurdson 1y agoRight but Dyson sphere isn't green I don't think.
- justonceokay 1y agoTo be fair unlike the Dyson sphere, leaves actually exist
- osigurdson 1y agoWhat I mean is capturing all energy from the sun seems ideal from an energy perspective. If you can prove that green is ideal, great. If not, what are you saying? Just that most leaves are green?
- Akronymus 1y agoIf we assume that absorbing green light comes at a cost to absorbing other spectra, the it very well could be that also absorbing green light would lead to less usable energy absorbed. At least thats my assumption on why planta dont absorb green.
- throaway955 1y agoDyson spheres aren't real.
- delusional 1y agoBefore reading: It seems obvious to me that colors came before color vision. Natural selection constrains diversity along the axes that it selects for, while genetic mutations supply diversity along all axes simultaneously. The net result would, intuitively for me, be that nature must have had the colors before anyone could see them, since there was no reason to constrain having colors. We'll see if that ends up being anywhere close to correct.
- delusional 1y agoAfter reading: It turns out I didn't grasp what the authors meant by "colorful signals". They're talking specifically about vivid colors that serve an evolutionary purpose, and in that case it seems rather clear that vision would have to come first. That is in fact also what turns out to be the findings. While the article is a fun and light read about some scientists doing some literature review to try and approximate when color as a signal evolved, I'm afraid the error bars are so large it's hard to find any certainty. The article does end with some speculation that vivid color can't actually evolve without eyes that produce a natural selection bias, since vivid color takes effort to construct. That claim of course has the same efficacy problems as what the article is mainly dealing with, but I do find it somewhat convincing, and have lowered my certainty that vivid colors actually evolved first.
- adrian_b 1y agoIt looks like by "colorful signals" they mean colorful surfaces of animals and plants, in the case when those colors are not colors necessary for the function of some vital organ, e.g. the pigments that capture light in plants or the red iron-based or blue copper-based respiratory pigments (such pigments have appeared before vision organs).
- taeric 1y agoTigers and such feel like a good counter example to colors needing eyes to see them? Specifically, the color of tigers is largely evolved against eyes that don't see the orange. As such, many colors would be expected in environments that don't confer an advantage to colors. And once an environment starts to give advantage, you would expect rapid convergence. Which, maybe I'm just reinforcing old learning of mine? Moths were a specific way of teaching evolution in my grade school, and they acted exactly as I just described. With soot covered areas growing rise to black colorings and cleaner air giving rise to the opposite.
- seydor 1y agoVideo on the internet was not a popular thing until we had broadband internet. Similarly it took millions of years for evolution to capitalize on the much broader bandwidth of color vision. I don't even want to know what will happen when we acquire infrared and uv vision
- hoseja 1y agoWe LOST infrared and UV vision by being little shrews scurrying in darkness from glorious five-color-receptor-vision dinosaurs. Even the third color we apes have we had to re-invent.
- Filligree 1y agoFlowers will happen. Most “white” flowers actually have landing strips painted on them in ultraviolet.
- xattt 1y agoWith the evolution of tech that enables viewing past visible light, humans have been able to find new ways of diagnosing and treating conditions that were just “bandaged over” a mere 200-300 years ago.
- HPsquared 1y agoA lot of insects can see in UV. Edit: interesting article here- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet_communication_in_butterflies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet_communication_in...
- mytailorisrich 1y agoYes, I read that pollinators see flowers very well because many are very bright in UV against the background [1]. Lots or cool pictures, too, if you Google "flowers UV". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UV_coloration_in_flowers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UV_coloration_in_flowers
- bobosha 1y ago
- datameta 1y agoI wonder if the median vividness of coloration of species has trended downward since full spread of humans all over the globe. The brightest birds in the tropics were relatively easy meals to procure compared to more well-camoflauged species.
- antonvs 1y agoCalvin and Hobbes addressed this: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fmm1qp7rwniw71.jpg%3Fwidth%3D1080%26crop%3Dsmart%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Df634f2504395afdd4fed2cdff5b1a41d8e508278 https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- citizenpaul 1y agoOne of the most disturbingly creepy things I've realized is when looking at render of a laser scanned environment. The oddly bumpy and uneven gray mass that everything show up as. That is actually reality. The filtered colorful smooth version we see is an arbitrary specific wavelength interpretation that our brains developed. We are actually living in that creepy gray horror movie render of the laser scan.
- npteljes 1y agoIn a way, you are on the right track, but the conclusion is different. What we live is far from gray, rather it's unfathomably more "colorful" and chaotic. We do see just a bit of it and apply a lot of filters to it, that is true. But it's mostly to dampen the environment, not to enrich it. (Not that we don't enrich it as well.) What I think the most important part is of your comment is how profound is to look at reality with a different lens. Be that a false color image like a laser scan, heatmap, space images, xray, microscope... it can be a really intense experience, just as you describe. Learning about the different filters (biases) that the brain puts on the stimuli is quite mind-boggling as well.
- gloomer23 1y agoIf you want to experience a more fun kind of dislocation, try using a grayscale color mapped thermal camera regularly.
- Xss3 1y agoNo. We live in a world full of wavelengths. Our brains are giving us a way to see them. The laser scan is further from the truth of reality than vision as it has less information about reality captured & displayed.
- moralestapia 1y agoThis.
- stronglikedan 1y ago> We live in a world full of wavelengths. Our brains are giving us a way to see them. Nitpick, but if we're talking about the world full of wavelengths, our brain gives us many ways to experience them!
- abc_lisper 1y agoDid they purposely ignore dinosaurs? Feathered dinosaurs are known to be colorful https://www.reuters.com/article/world/chinese-rainbow-dinosaur-had-iridescent-feathers-like-hummingbirds-idUSKBN1F4155/ https://www.reuters.com/article/world/chinese-rainbow-dinosa... Hard to believe their claim fish are the first to evolve color for mating displays 100 million years ago.
- timewizard 1y agoBacteria can be colorful. It can also fluoresce. My blood is red because it has iron in it not because there's an evolutionary link to my eyesight.
- awhitby 1y agoYou're very likely right there's no causation in that direction, but it seems entirely possible that we experience red as a vivid color in part because noticing blood is evolutionarily important.
- stronglikedan 1y ago> Feathered dinosaurs are known to be colorful Perhaps because it's not truly known. > The discovery "suggests a more colourful Jurassic World than we previously imagined," -- from your link
- ethan_smith 1y agoThe article likely distinguishes between simply having colors versus evolving colors specifically for sexual selection - fossil evidence can show dinosaur coloration but determining behavioral purpose is much harder than observing living fish species.
- wtcactus 1y agoA very interesting tidbit of information I’ve only learned/realized when I was already an adult, is that many otherwise plain flowers have really intricate patterns in the ultraviolet, since some insects see in that spectrum.
- vanderZwan 1y ago> They have evolved even in species that don’t have color vision, likely because their predators do. I mean, that shouldn't be too surprising since plants don't have vision at all and still evolved colors.