Seeing colors as you see through the eyes of a bee or a bird: this is what has been made possible thanks to a new camera system developed by American and British scientists. For the first time, it is now possible to create video images using Animal Colors.

The researchers developed a new camera system specifically for this purpose, with four separate color channels for blue, green, red, and ultraviolet. By taking into account the specific sensitivity of animals’ eyes, scientists were able to calculate the image this produces.

You can see the result in this video:

“This is beautiful and very interesting research,” says Koen Haack, a brain researcher at the Nijmegen Donders Institute and Tilburg University, who was not involved in the study. “Color photography is very difficult. Technically, they handled it smartly and well.” It was already possible to calculate animals’ color perception in an image, but not before for moving images.

In videos, UV light that is invisible to us is translated into visible color. Scientists admit that the choice of this color is ultimately arbitrary, but there is an idea behind it. “Human eyes can only register blue, green and red,” lead researcher Daniel Hanley said. “Bees can only see ultraviolet, blue, and green light. So, we changed the colors: ultraviolet becomes blue, blue becomes green, and green becomes red.”

The fact that the white sunscreen in the video looks yellow also has something to do with this transformation. Sunscreen absorbs UV rays, leaving only the blue-green color to the bee’s eyes. After transformation, these together produce yellow.

Researchers are already working on broader applications: “We can use this technique in any animal whose photoreceptors we know are sensitive,” Hanley says. “We are looking forward to applying this technology to specific birds, insects and lizards.” A new camera system could help ecologists and nature filmmakers visualize the world of animals.

In the meantime, the question remains unanswered whether bees and birds actually experience the world as shown in the videos. Your eyes do not register the color, but rather the wavelength of light. The experience of color originates in your mind. “We see strawberries as red, whether they are in the shade or in bright sunlight,” Haack says. “We see it as red either way, but your brain is actually making it up.”

Science has not yet discovered how this “invention” occurs in the brain, whether it is the brain of a bee, a bird, or a human. “How our brain processes color is still a very challenging problem,” Haack says.

The researchers themselves are also aware of this problem, but Hanley foresees a possible solution: “More and more experiments are being performed that help us understand this process better.”