The Mantis Shrimp is one of the most insane animals in existence, and it’s not just because their punch hits with the force of a bullet and causes the water surrounding the punch to boil. The most insane thing about this particular animal is its eyesight.
Humans can see three primary colors. Everything we see is some mixture of those three. We’re better at seeing some colors than others. There are a lot of colors that we can’t see at all.
Mantis Shrimp? They can see 12 primary colors, not only giving them more color detail in the same range as us, but giving them access to colors well above and below our visible spectrum.
Odds are that we’ll never get to see the world the way the Mantis Shrimp does, but a while back RadioLab did a great episode replacing color with sound, and using that to give us an idea of how much more intense the world is to this little guy. Stuck inside waiting out Covid-19? Check out the episode here.
The Zootographer 