All human color technology - paintings, photographs, screens, lighting - is optimized to stimulate the three types of human retinal cone cells. The exact sensitivity of each cone type to light across the spectrum is not even as important as the relative levels of activation of the three cones by the light. Which is why when some light activates 100% of “red” cones and 100% of “green” cones you see it as yellow, regardless of whether the light is a broad-spectrum light from an incandescent lamp or a single frequency 575nm LED light. This is also why only 3 numbers (0-255, 0-255, 0-255) is enough to describe every color that humans can ever see.
Other animals can have different number of types of cone cells, and the light-sensitive pigments in them can be slightly different from human ones, having different spectrum response curves. Bees in particular can see ultraviolet light, and flowers have designs on them that can only be seen in UV, specifically for bees.
An arbitrary photograph will not appear color-photorealistic to other animals the way it does to us, but animals can still see shapes in it and identify objects, the same way you can recognize people even in a photo-negative.
All human color technology - paintings, photographs, screens, lighting - is optimized to stimulate the three types of human retinal cone cells. The exact sensitivity of each cone type to light across the spectrum is not even as important as the relative levels of activation of the three cones by the light. Which is why when some light activates 100% of “red” cones and 100% of “green” cones you see it as yellow, regardless of whether the light is a broad-spectrum light from an incandescent lamp or a single frequency 575nm LED light. This is also why only 3 numbers (0-255, 0-255, 0-255) is enough to describe every color that humans can ever see.
Other animals can have different number of types of cone cells, and the light-sensitive pigments in them can be slightly different from human ones, having different spectrum response curves. Bees in particular can see ultraviolet light, and flowers have designs on them that can only be seen in UV, specifically for bees.
An arbitrary photograph will not appear color-photorealistic to other animals the way it does to us, but animals can still see shapes in it and identify objects, the same way you can recognize people even in a photo-negative.
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