How do budgerigars see the world around them?

2024 Author: Priscilla Miln | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 00:21

People have always been interested in how their pets see the world around them. For example, budgerigars. What colors do they see? Can these birds see in the dark? Can they really see their own reflection when looking in a mirror? The answers to these questions can be found in the article.

Features of the vision of parrots

Vision is the main receptor for the perception of the surrounding world for budgerigars, with which they are able to navigate in space. The main organs of vision are the eyes, positioned in such a way that parrots can see almost 360° around themselves, with each eye able to focus on different objects.

The large size of the eyes relative to the size of the body allows you to see the picture close-up, while all the details are visible in great detail. And the changed shape of the lens and its movement relative to the cornea make the picture contrast. In addition, budgerigars can see 150 frames per second, a person - only 24 frames,and dogs - about 15. This ability allows birds to distinguish even the smallest objects at high speed.

To understand how budgerigars and some other vertebrates see, scientists have conducted a series of studies. It should be noted that until the early 70s of the twentieth century, it was still not known that many animals that do not belong to mammals can distinguish the part of the spectrum invisible to the human eye in the near ultraviolet.

Color sensitivity

A person can judge how budgerigars see, based on their own experience and the research of scientists conducted in this direction. Therefore, it is very difficult to accept the fact that parrots can see this world in a different way. The visual system of a person is imperfect, but the ability to see allows him to perceive the world in three dimensions and move freely in space, while distinguishing the color of objects.

However, many animals - birds, reptiles and insects - can also recognize ultraviolet rays. Empirically, scientists managed to find out what colors the budgerigar sees. To have an idea about the process of perception of color and contours of objects, you need to understand how it works.

Objects absorb light only at certain wavelengths, they reflect everything else. The perception of light comes through nerve impulses, which are caused in the brain by exposure to different wavelengths of reflected light rays.

The ability of vertebrates to distinguish colors is due to the fact thatthat in the retina there are cones, which are a layer of nerve cells. They transmit visual signals to the brain. Each of these cones contains a pigment from the protein opsin, which is associated with retinal, a substance related to vitamin A.

When a pigment absorbs photons of reflected light, the retinal, under the influence of this energy, changes its shape and starts a series of molecular transformations that activate the cones, and then the neurons of the retina. One type of these neurons sends an impulse along the optic nerve. And then the information is transmitted to the brain.

In order for the brain to see color, it needs to compare the reactions of several types of cones that contain different pigments. If more than two types of cones are present in the retina, then this will allow better discrimination of colors. Humans have three types of cones, while budgies have four.

It is almost impossible for a human to understand what exactly and how budgerigars see. After all, scientists' experiments have shown that birds use all four types of cones.

What a budgerigar sees

Birds are not only able to see in the near ultraviolet, but they can also distinguish colors and shades that people cannot even imagine.

To get a little closer to understanding how budgerigars see, the following incredible analogy was proposed by research scientists. If human trichromatic vision is a triangle, then bird tetrachromatic vision requires one more dimension for theirtrihedral pyramid - tetrahedron. So, the space above the base (human triangle) of the tetrahedron is the whole variety of colors that are inaccessible to humans, but which are natural for birds.

How parrots tell each other by gender

From such a variety of color information, parrots, along with other types of birds, benefit greatly. Males are almost always much brighter than females. When it was already proved that birds see in the ultraviolet, the scientist of the University of Minnesota, Muir Eaton, studied 139 species of birds as an experiment.

He measured the wavelength of light, which was reflected from the plumage of identical in color (in the eyes of a person) heterosexual individuals. Eaton's conclusion was stunning. In 90% of the cases studied, the birds accurately understood the difference between males and females.

Studies by other scientists on different continents have shown that colors with an ultraviolet component are often found in males in "nuptial" plumage involved in courtship displays. Females prefer those males whose plumage reflects more ultraviolet rays.

How budgerigars see in the dark

In the process of evolution and artificial breeding of these birds, they have lost the ability of night vision. Can budgerigars see in the dark? They hardly see. At night, parrots usually sleep.

If the human ancestor had not lost one type of cone pigment in the process of evolution, and human vision would now bewould be tetrachromatic, like birds, most reptiles and fish, I wonder what we would see? What colors and shades would be available to us? Surely the world around would become brighter, more diverse and enchanting than we are used to seeing it.