My favourite blue tit fact is that they are sexually dichromatic under UV light only. The male crown is brighter in UV and females prefer males with brighter crowns. Mere humans can't tell the difference.
I read a passage in a book growing up, I can't remember what book it was, but it was about how crows are only black to humans, they can see different colors than we can so they're very colorful to each other, covered in all sorts of brilliant colors.
Another fun fact: bees can see utraviolet, and flowers are "designed" for bees, so many of the patterns are invisible to humans, but visible under UV photography:
Sure, ultraviolet photoreceptors are cool. You know what would be cooler? What if birds, and their dinosaur ancestors, had evolved infrared phototransmitters that can lase? The world would be a different place. Imagine how upon hearing the distinctive call of the Red-Eyed Vireo animals and people would scramble for cover lest they become its next charred meal. On the other hand, self-roasting chickens would be a godsend for the industry.
Thank goodness birds are not real or this might have been a thing.
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[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 14.0 ms ] threadhttps://www.webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/17B.html
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/mantis_shrimp
Yes, some of the colors shift due to the false-color addition of the UV channel but there were no new patterns or highlighted areas.
Comes from this rather brilliantly titled paper: Blue tits are ultraviolet tits https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1688906/
Will Great Tits become Little Tits? https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1095-8312.1979.tb00040.x
Size matters: competition between male and female great tit offspring https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29314002/
And even outside ornithology:
The mammogram that cried Wolfe https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe068244
To pee or not to pee https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17895334/
Another fun fact: bees can see utraviolet, and flowers are "designed" for bees, so many of the patterns are invisible to humans, but visible under UV photography:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UV_coloration_in_flowers
https://www.wildflower.org/magazine/native-plants/a-differen...
Oh to be a mantis shrimp, have 16 different photoreceptors, and see not only into IR and UV, but the polarization of light too!
Thank goodness birds are not real or this might have been a thing.