Hello!
Last week I had briefly discussed the color vision of Mantis shrimp, in addition to eye movement, and this week I wanted to make a painting that would demonstrate how those color receptors work. Mantis shrimp can have between 12 to 16 color receptors which is considerably more than the mere 3 that humans have. Yet the way the mantis shrimp processes color is not nearly as accurate as we do. They can distinguish between colors that are different from each other but not as precisely as we do. We are able to see gradations and subtle shifts in color whereas they cannot. It seems fair though, considering they have access to so much more of the visual spectrum than us. Below is an example of how these color receptors work.
When thinking about how to do this I was wondering what art would look like if a Mantis shrimp were to make it. Vision, at its core, is a survival tool. The way animals see correlates to how they have adapted to survive, which makes me wonder what would be visually exciting to animals or if they could appreciate something aesthetically like we can with art.
I chose to paint a photograph that I took of a flower but in the way of using color as a Mantis shrimp would process it. Realistically, this is not at all what the mantis shrimp would see but I think that it gives some more perspective as to how they perceive color.
