Mantis shrimps seem to be the champions of this. They have between 12 and 16 different types of cones, spanning into the ultraviolet. They have a very different visual processing system to most animals though, so despite all the cones, they don’t seem to synthesise shades between them, so they probably don’t have a very vivid image.
Mantis shrimps seem to be the champions of this. They have between 12 and 16 different types of cones, spanning into the ultraviolet. They have a very different visual processing system to most animals though, so despite all the cones, they don’t seem to synthesise shades between them, so they probably don’t have a very vivid image.
They basically have most of visual processing offloaded to cones because of how simplistic their nervous system has to be.
You can actually distinguish colors better than a mantis shrimp.
Turns out a lot of the processing that allows us to distinguish between colors happens in our huge brains. Take that, stupid shrimp!
What they are the champions of, however, is seeing polarized light. Some researchers have modeled cameras off of their eyes to help detent cancer.