New Camera Technology Reveals the Natural World Through Animal Eyes

A new camera technology has revealed the world through the eyes of animals. The software is able to convert digital photos to animal vision, and can be used to analyze colors and patterns in order to study animal and plant signaling.

Until now, there has been no user-friendly software program that allows researchers to calibrate their images and convert them to animal color spaces. Instead, scientists have had to do this manually, causing them to spend a large chunk of time on this project. Now, though, the open source software can change all that.

"Viewing the world through the eyes of another animal has become much easier thanks to our new software. Digital cameras are powerful tools for measuring colors and patterns in nature but until now it has been surprisingly difficult to use digital photos to make accurate and reliable measurements of color," said Jolyon Troscianko, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Our software allows us to calibrate images and convert them to animal vision, so that we can measure how the scene might look to humans and non-humans alike."

Already, the software has been used in a wide range of studies, such as color change in green shore crabs and determining the aspects of camouflage that protect nightjar clutches from being spotted by predators.

Color vision varies across the animal kingdom, and can even vary within a given species. In addition, there are animal that see far more colors than humans, which is why scientists studying these species need to measure UV to understand how these animals view the world.

The new software could be huge when it comes to animal studies in the future.

The findings are published in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

In order to download the free software, go online here.

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