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This Adorable Jumping Spider Can't Actually See Its Own Most Vivid Color - ScienceAlert
Jan 22, 2022 55 secs
New experimental evidence suggests that a jumping spider called Saitis barbipes has no photoreceptors capable of perceiving the color red.

barbipes – like many jumping spiders – is vividly hued: the male daubed with brilliant splashes of rich, resplendent red.

But if the spiders can't even see the color red, this makes the markings and their placement something of a mystery.

Using microspectrophotometry, the team identified photoreceptors for ultraviolet, blue, and green wavelengths in the spiders' retinas – but there was no sign of a red photoreceptor.

Instead, to the spiders, it seems that what we see as red merely looks like an extension of their black markings.

"Instead, we found that red and black are perceived equivalently, or nearly so, by these spiders and that if red is perceived as different from black, it is perceived as a dark 'spider green' rather than red.".

They modelled how predators with predominantly red vision, such as birds and lizards, might see the spiders and found that, from a distance, the red patches might blur with the black markings to appear more brownish, like the spider's leaf litter habitat.

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