Aquatic Campaigns

[Brendan Byrd]

“Forests” of giant “Christmas Tree Worms” and other filter feeding tube worms…

Giant hermit crab using half of a wrecked ship as its’ “shell”…

 

[Anicolarys]

There’s a literal world of inspiration out there.

Consider the scaly foot gastropod:

Scaly-foot gastropod - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It’s a mollusk that lives in extremely hostile deep water conditions near volcanic vents, and extracts metallic compounds from the water to create its shell and foot-scales. That’s NUTS!

A fascinating find. The Chrysomallon squamiferum is living proof that nature has a forge older and more ingenious than any fantasy blacksmith. Using iron sulfides for its shell... it's pure 'bio-dark fantasy.' Thank you for sharing this, it's a goldmine for any GM.

 

[Bohandas]

So, there's a bit of an error in there. Look at the butterfly - "...in addition to seeing two colors we don't have names for, butterflies can see a massive spectrum of colors our brains aren't even capable of processing."

That is, as described, extremely misleading, bordering on false.

Humans have Red, Green, and Blue cones, and broadband receptors we call rods. The eyes of the Japanese yellow swallowtail (Papilio xuthus) contain ultraviolet, violet, blue, green, red and broad-band receptors (which are not quite the same as our rods).

Now, we have to get into what it means to "see" a color. As the graphic shows, we don't have a receptor for yellow, but we can see yellow. We don't have specific receptors for violet, but we CAN see violet, even though the butterfly has a receptor for it we do not.

For no animal are the color receptors really all that specific. Our cones that we say "see green" have peak sensitivity in Green, and then sensitivity trailing off up and down the spectrum from there. So, when light hits our eyes, our rods go "There is light!". From each cone we get a different signal strength - like blue fires 50%, Green fires 75%, Red fired 25% - and our brain interprets that combination signal as a color.

This, is by the way, how mixing paint works. We do not have specific receptors for "purple". Violet light hits our retina, and generates a mix of signal strengths, and we perceive "purple". But, any mixture of light that generates the same relative responses will also be seen as purple. It isn't that, if we mix red and blue paint, the result suddenly reflects violet light. It just reflects light that generates a signal very much like violet light does!

Now, with butterflies, we might note that with more different receptors, they should have greater perception of fine differences in hue. And that may be so. But, it may also be that since they have itty bitty brains, they don't have as much processing power as we do, and they may make up for that lack with having different receptors - yielding color differentiation either a bit better or worse than ours, in the end. It is difficult to tell what the butterfly brain actually perceives.

People with normal trichromatic vision can definitely distinguish colors that people with dichromatic colorblindness can't, why should that pattern not continue with the introduction of new cones?

 

[Umbran]

People with normal trichromatic vision can definitely distinguish colors that people with dichromatic colorblindness can't, why should that pattern not continue with the introduction of new cones?

Four years later, we come back to this?

And, weird question, given that the post is there specifically to answer the question you are asking. But I'll restate it, to make it more obvious:

Perception of color has two parts*: The receptors (cones) in the eye, and the neural equipment back in the brain to actually make use of the information in question. Having extra types of cones does not help if you don't have the dedicated neurology. Butterflies have literally pinhead-sized brains, so they aren't exactly packing a lot of extra processing power.


*Actually, at least three, but the two are sufficient for the point.