Scifi eyes

[Spacescifi]

 

Not having human eyes on humanoids is common in scifi.

But, having done research, I have found that animal eyes are like job specific tools.

Very good for doing whatever the creature does.

For an advanced race like humanity. Human eyes tend to win out.

Change skin and all else, just not the eyes. What you think?

[KerikBalm]

Ummm, they should have eyes... but they don't need to look like human ones...

In many ways, octopus and related eyes are far superior to ours (no blindspot, many can sense light polarization).

I wouldn't go for compound eyes though, those have bad resolution.

[Spacescifi]

48 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

Ummm, they should have eyes... but they don't need to look like human ones...

In many ways, octopus and related eyes are far superior to ours (no blindspot, many can sense light polarization).

I wouldn't go for compound eyes though, those have bad resolution.

 

Well.. octopuses lack full color vision. So do goats. Humans have trichomat vision (something about three color combos) whereas goats have less (dichromats or something).

Where most all animals have us beat is night vision because of tapetus lucidum, The shiny mirror that reflects light again into the eye and makes their eyes glow when near light at night. 

However their eyes do not process as many colors, and I have suspicion that if their eyes could process as many colors as us while also retaining night vision mirrors to reflect extra light into the eye it would either be akin to sensory overload during daylight, or perhaps lead to blindness quicker.

That is not all. If we had eyes like this, you would have panoramic vision 24/7.

Which works best at distance, as you can see more. Up close you would have to tilt your eyeballs more than you do normally to see above and below.

It is perhaps no coincidence that I read that goats are commonly farsighted, meaning up close vision is blurry, but sharp as a tack at a distance.

Not particular good for humans. Unless you modded them to be normal sighted. Problem is, I am not sure their pupils are even capable of normal humange clarity of vision.

In fact animals tend to get by with a combo of advanced physical senses. Not just one. But we humans rely heavily on sight. More than animals, for whom it is often not their most relied on sense (it's smell for doggies).

Edited July 12, 2019 by Spacescifi
Dichromat

[Scotius]

Don't sell our senses short. We don't have hawk's eyesight. Dog's smell. Cat's hearing. But, unlike those animals, we do not need them. We are not predators (technically) - we are omnivorous generalists. And for our initial role in environment we have good enough senses. Our ancestors could detect dangers and find food efficiently enough to survive, propagate the species and colonize new areas. We could probably evolve a better set - but instead we went for bigger, more capable brain. Advantages of which catapulted us to the top of food chain, and allowed us to rectify the shortcomings of our senses with technology - many times over.

[SuperFastJellyfish]

What type of star/s did these eyes evolve under?  You can make up whatever eye-like sensor you like, depending on the star's dominant wavelengths(IR, Visible, UV, Xray, etc. )

[Spacescifi]

24 minutes ago, SuperFastJellyfish said:

What type of star/s did these eyes evolve under?  You can make up whatever eye-like sensor you like, depending on the star's dominant wavelengths(IR, Visible, UV, Xray, etc. )

 

Starlight wavelength vision basis?

I mean... maybe?

There is a point where if your range of vision is limited, there is a limit to the types of technology you can create. Unless your other senses massively offset your visual deficiencies. In animals they mostly do, even though there are some rather hard limits on them physically. In other words, even with human intelligence, an ape could never develop technoligy on a human scale. The hand lacks the flexibility of use the human hand has, and they also lack the endurance.

There is a good reason why we see animals lounging around most of the time. And it is not because they have nothing better to do. They actually need to rest often. Arguably more than a human for the same 8 hour work period.

Edited July 12, 2019 by Spacescifi

[magnemoe]

5 minutes ago, SuperFastJellyfish said:

What type of star/s did these eyes evolve under?  You can make up whatever eye-like sensor you like, depending on the star's dominant wavelengths(IR, Visible, UV, Xray, etc. )

You probably need eyes who is more sensible to weaker red light, Uv or higher as an dominant wavelength and your star will be very short lived. 
However with strong light you probably want neanderthal style eyebrows unless your hair (feather or other stuff) do the same.

One human specialty is the white around our eyes. That is pretty rare, it makes it easy to see there the other guy is looking however. 
Wonder why birds and mammals has vertical slit eyes if they have that? might be beneficial looking sideways? in water up and down might be more important.

But yes no compound eyes, you want two for 3d view, you might add bonus eyes or perhaps on primary. You also want to protect them, unlike insects an intelligent species has to live for decades so exposed eyes is likely to get destroyed an large animal will also take lots more damage who just hurt you like running into stuff. Insects are light and they reproduce fast so loosing eyes is not that much of an deal. 

[Spacescifi]

10 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

You probably need eyes who is more sensible to weaker red light, Uv or higher as an dominant wavelength and your star will be very short lived. 
However with strong light you probably want neanderthal style eyebrows unless your hair (feather or other stuff) do the same.

One human specialty is the white around our eyes. That is pretty rare, it makes it easy to see there the other guy is looking however. 
Wonder why birds and mammals has vertical slit eyes if they have that? might be beneficial looking sideways? in water up and down might be more important.

But yes no compound eyes, you want two for 3d view, you might add bonus eyes or perhaps on primary. You also want to protect them, unlike insects an intelligent species has to live for decades so exposed eyes is likely to get destroyed an large animal will also take lots more damage who just hurt you like running into stuff. Insects are light and they reproduce fast so loosing eyes is not that much of an deal. 

 

Slit eyes have a greater up/down view (as the pupil is the part creatures see from).

If you try hard enough, you can actually notice that your own field of view is circular, equal in all views. So long your pupil is normal/healthy.

For an animal with slit or rectangular pupiled eyes their field of view is shaped accordingly.

I notice that slit eyed creatures often are small and do a lot of climbing, jumping and hunting. Being exceptional at seeing above and below pays pff when you are trying to land from 6 feet up or higher.

Rectangular pupils are great for predator detection. Also great for toads and frogs who zip their tongues out to catch prey.

[Guest]

Some of the earliest creatures on earth had compound eyes with lenses of calcite crystal @_@.

You could have anything you want for eyes! XD

 https://i1-wp-com.cdn.ampproject.org/ii/w1200/s/i1.wp.com/depositsmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/eyes.jpg?fit=850%2C727&ssl=1

Edited July 12, 2019 by Guest

[Spacescifi]

8 minutes ago, Dale Christopher said:

Some of the earliest creatures on earth had compound eyes with lenses of calcite crystal @_@.

You could have anything you want for eyes! XD

 https://i1-wp-com.cdn.ampproject.org/ii/w1200/s/i1.wp.com/depositsmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/eyes.jpg?fit=850%2C727&ssl=1

Certainly you can fictionally.

Unless you want to go through the mental jump ropes of what colors tjey can and cannot see when interacting with humans, it is easier just give them human vision.

[Guest]

Actually, seeing far UVs or X-rays doesn't seem to plausible. Indeed, I find it rather remarkable that human vision cuts off just a bit short of being able to see ionizing radiation. I don't think that's a coincidence, though there are several possible reasons for that. However, lower wavelengths are possible, though higher ones offer superior resolution. While there are multiple ways of constructing an optical detector, there are good reasons for making it operate in visual spectrum. Under a different kind of star it might have a different sensitivity profile, go deeper into IR and under a red dwarf it might not be able to see the upper part of visual spectrum (if the star just doesn't output enough photons at that energy for it to be worthwhile), but overall, I'd expect it to be comparable to human vision somewhat.

Senses evolve according to the environment and the needs of a creature that evolved them. Human eyes are not very good at gauging distance, for example, but good at seeing static objects. Many animals are the other way around, and the way an eye is built depends on what it needs to do best. An alien that lives in a very different environment may have very different "configuration" of senses. An aquatic creature might, for instance, have only rudimentary light sensors, and instead use high precision sonar as a primary sense (the way we use sight). Of course, for a creature like that to function well outside of water, it would have to develop instruments for converting light into sound... just like we developed equipment to visualize sound waves (and used it to "see" into the ocean depths). 

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

 

[natsirt721]

Wavelength and pupil shape are not related. Both are determined by need, but affected by different factors. 

For xenobio coloration, there are two important factors. Primarily, the star of the homeworld. The human vision spectrum is attuned to center on the 380-740 nm band, from violet to red, with yellow-green (555 nm) in the middle and black on the edges. Why this wavelength? The sun's peak energy output, per wavelength, is somewhere between 500 and 600 nm. The human eye is attuned to detect green(ish - we'll say its green although its a little closer to yellow-green) light because there are more energetic photons hitting the retina at those wavelengths.  This is also why plants (chlorophyll) is green - peak power absorption.

Statistically, the most common stars in the galaxy are red dwarfs (M-type) , with surface temperatures near 4000 K - this is cooler than our sun (G-type, surface around 5800 K), so (assuming an equal chance of existence of life around both G and M type stars) in all likelihood aliens will be able to see well into the infrared, and may not even be able to perceive any wavelengths in the visible spectrum.  Additionally, their pupils will likely be larger in order to pick up a larger amount of the weaker sunlight, and may easily be blinded by Earth-normal brightnesses.

Frankly, I'm too lazy to do too much research into pupil shape, but a quick google search suggest the following: Pupils with horizontal aspect ratios are prey, while pupils with vertical aspect ratios are predators. This also correlates with the placement of eyes (either for stereoscopic or wide-field vision) for on the sides vs the front of the head, respectively.  In general, it is probably safe to assume that your xenos are predators, because prey seldom have time for the advanced habits that advanced beings need to cross the thin vermeer from animal to sentient (of course, this could be circumvented with clever storytelling, e.g. Pournelle/Niven's Footfall)   

[KerikBalm]

13 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Well.. octopuses lack full color vision.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/07/how-colorblind-cuttlefish-may-see-living-color

It makes sense that they can see in color, after all, they change their color in amazing ways for display and camoflauge, how would they even know what color to change to? But they see color in a very different way than us. I think its analagous to getting depth perception without binocular vision by bobbing one's head... like how this appears 3d:

 

Quote

Humans have trichomat vision (something about three color combos) whereas goats have less (dichromats or something).

All vertebrates living today evolved from tetrachromates. Mammals lost their "color vision" during a nocturnal phase in our evolution (thank dinosaurs >:(   ). In the primates we "re-evolved" a 3rd color sensing pigment from duplication and mutation of one of them (its not really homologous to either the 3rd or 4th color sensing pigments in the non-mammal vertebrates).

If it weren't for a nocturnal phase way back, we'd most likely be tetrachromates.

Quote

However their eyes do not process as many colors, and I have suspicion that if their eyes could process as many colors as us while also retaining night vision mirrors to reflect extra light into the eye it would either be akin to sensory overload during daylight,

I'm not sure that's true. They've genetically engineered mice to have a 3rd color sensing pigment, and they seemed just fine, and could tell color. With better data, signal processing can be easier (better signal to noise ratio means less computational power to discern and analyze the signal... so it may be the opposite. I'm not sure.

Quote

Slit eyes have a greater up/down view (as the pupil is the part creatures see from).

I'm pretty sure this is wrong. Its not like your field of view changes in dim light (when pupils are wide) vs daylight (when pupils contract).

Its a property of the lens, and what angle it focuses light.

Pupil shape is not for field of view, but dynamic range it seems (in the case of slit eyes), or maybe to enhance chromatic aberration in the case of cuttlefish for sensing color, and I think I once heard its also involved in the ability of cephalapods to sense light polarization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pupil#Other_animals

This would be quite an FOV change if what you said was true:

7 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

Actually, seeing far UVs or X-rays doesn't seem to plausible.

Neither is seeing in super long wavelengths, wavelength is a length, and you need molecules of certain sizes to caputre light of certain wavelengths. You won't be seeing in radiowaves for sure, and hard X rays have wavelengths smaller than the distances between atoms in a crystal...

Then of course there's the fact that ionizing radiation would do bad things to carbon based molecules meant to detect it... so... you can push the limits a little higher or lower than what we see, you can give them heat sensitive pits like some snakes have to give them very low res "vision" in the longer IR spectrum (should couple with being cold blooded, otherwise the heat of your own body overwhelms the signal), but mostly we should be seeing in the same spectrum, or have a large overlap.

They could see a lot more colors than us... had a non-mammal vertebrate become an intelligent tool maker with complex language, they'd be tetra-chromates.

[kerbiloid]

4 hours ago, natsirt721 said:

This is also why plants (chlorophyll) is green - peak power absorption.

Afaik, not exactly so. Green photons are worse than red and blue ones, so original plants were possibly purple.-

4 hours ago, natsirt721 said:

Statistically, the most common stars in the galaxy are red dwarfs (M-type) , with surface temperatures near 4000 K - this is cooler than our sun (G-type, surface around 5800 K), so (assuming an equal chance of existence of life around both G and M type stars) 

But as the conditions in their habitation zone are much less friendly for evoultion, unlikely the life can evolve into something with eyes before the geological processes stop and the planet gets deadly.
So, probably most of eyed beings see in yellow-dwarvish spectre.

An idea for sci-fi: underwater creatures living around an internally radioactive underwater volcano shining with blue light they use to see.

Or dark elves can use it in a cave pool.

Edited July 13, 2019 by kerbiloid

[KerikBalm]

4 hours ago, natsirt721 said:

The human eye is attuned to detect green(ish - we'll say its green although its a little closer to yellow-green) light because there are more energetic photons hitting the retina at those wavelengths.  This is also why plants (chlorophyll) is green - peak power absorption.

This is absolutely wrong.

Plants reflect the green, and absorb red and blue.

You may want to watch this: 

Plants may be green, because early on they (well, cyanobacteria, which merged with plants to create their chloroplasts) had to compete with purple sulfur bacteria.

 

Edited July 13, 2019 by KerikBalm

[DDE]

@Spacescifi

As always I’ll refer this discussion to http://www.xenology.info/Xeno/13.5.htm first.

[Spacescifi]

5 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/07/how-colorblind-cuttlefish-may-see-living-color

It makes sense that they can see in color, after all, they change their color in amazing ways for display and camoflauge, how would they even know what color to change to? But they see color in a very different way than us. I think its analagous to getting depth perception without binocular vision by bobbing one's head... like how this appears 3d:

 

All vertebrates living today evolved from tetrachromates. Mammals lost their "color vision" during a nocturnal phase in our evolution (thank dinosaurs >:(   ). In the primates we "re-evolved" a 3rd color sensing pigment from duplication and mutation of one of them (its not really homologous to either the 3rd or 4th color sensing pigments in the non-mammal vertebrates).

If it weren't for a nocturnal phase way back, we'd most likely be tetrachromates.

I'm not sure that's true. They've genetically engineered mice to have a 3rd color sensing pigment, and they seemed just fine, and could tell color. With better data, signal processing can be easier (better signal to noise ratio means less computational power to discern and analyze the signal... so it may be the opposite. I'm not sure.

I'm pretty sure this is wrong. Its not like your field of view changes in dim light (when pupils are wide) vs daylight (when pupils contract).

Its a property of the lens, and what angle it focuses light.

Pupil shape is not for field of view, but dynamic range it seems (in the case of slit eyes), or maybe to enhance chromatic aberration in the case of cuttlefish for sensing color, and I think I once heard its also involved in the ability of cephalapods to sense light polarization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pupil#Other_animals

This would be quite an FOV change if what you said was true:

Neither is seeing in super long wavelengths, wavelength is a length, and you need molecules of certain sizes to caputre light of certain wavelengths. You won't be seeing in radiowaves for sure, and hard X rays have wavelengths smaller than the distances between atoms in a crystal...

Then of course there's the fact that ionizing radiation would do bad things to carbon based molecules meant to detect it... so... you can push the limits a little higher or lower than what we see, you can give them heat sensitive pits like some snakes have to give them very low res "vision" in the longer IR spectrum (should couple with being cold blooded, otherwise the heat of your own body overwhelms the signal), but mostly we should be seeing in the same spectrum, or have a large overlap.

They could see a lot more colors than us... had a non-mammal vertebrate become an intelligent tool maker with complex language, they'd be tetra-chromates.

 

You are right. I was wrong about the pupil size having a bigger field of view. Yet I have read that goats do have panoramic vision, and have eyes on the side of their head.

Such eyes in front on humans would give more field of view than we already have, but not. But not as much if they were on the sides of the head.

Slit eyes are barely understand but they look awesome. It seems they are for nocturnal animals, since thosr slits get really thin in bright light, and expand in dim light.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Neither is seeing in super long wavelengths, wavelength is a length, and you need molecules of certain sizes to caputre light of certain wavelengths. You won't be seeing in radiowaves for sure, and hard X rays have wavelengths smaller than the distances between atoms in a crystal...

Actually, it is possible (though of questionable utility) for a living creature to "see" radio waves. It just needs a biological antenna. This is not implausible, and the wavelength would be limited mostly by the creature's size. However, long wavelengths have their problems, starting with the fact there are, for most part, no reliable natural sources (this is presumably why nothing evolved a biological radar), and for really long waves, diffraction kills your imaging resolution completely. It's not difficult to imagine an a biological radio receiver if a reliable natural source was present, but I'd imagine that it'd be more like a biological ADF (directional reception for navigation purposes) than vision.

[KerikBalm]

5 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

It just needs a biological antenna. This is not implausible, and the wavelength would be limited mostly by the creature's size. 

yea, sure, but its not going to fit inside a normal sized eyeball is my point, nor within individual cells. So you won't get a high res image with it. 

You could have simple direction and amplitude, I suppose

[Guest]

You won't get a high resolution image with radio waves no matter what. It doesn't matter how big your antenna is, or what shape it has (it's a related thing, though). It's a physical limitation, maximum attainable resolution is directly proportional to wavelength. This is why electron microscopes are so good - electrons, when treated as waves (quantum mechanics say you can do that), have a very short wavelength. Meanwhile, radar is great for detecting whether something is there or not, but getting the actual shape from your radar return, while theoretically possible with some setups, is nontrivial.

[kerbiloid]

So, not "see" the radio, but "hear".

@Spacescifi, your turn! We need a thread about space ears.

[Spacescifi]

32 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

So, not "see" the radio, but "hear".

@Spacescifi, your turn! We need a thread about space ears.

 

Oh I have read up on that too. I do not think it as interesting though.

Form follows function. Meaning, does a humanoid really need to hear a mouse sqeaking behind or inside of a wall? A cat might, but not a civilized humanoid.

Also, in some creatures ears provide a secondary role. Cooling. Since most animals either lack sweat glands like us or they are no where near as efficient at cooling the body as ours.

Edited July 13, 2019 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

Ready to use infrared antennas.

[Spacescifi]

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Ready to use infrared antennas.

 

Okay. I am okay with that. A few questions though:

1. What do they need infrared antenna for?

2. How should the antenna look? Especially if they already have the famous Mark 1 human eyeballs?

Certainly infrared antenna would'nt or should'nt look like this?

 

Don't get me wrong, she's a beauty. but beauty ain't winning this. Science will. So.. what would or should infrared antenna look like?

 

Edited July 13, 2019 by Spacescifi