Sight of Na'vi and humans

[dirty_marmelade]

Hello I'm new here, but I have one question that doesn't want to leave my mind and the question is if Na'vi people see differently from humans.
I mean they have completely different eyes and their perception of colours should be also different.
And now I don't know if I watch the movie through the Na'vi eyes or the human eyes.

 

[Yrel]

i'd guess they'd have similar range of vision to a humans for most things. there's no indication that they can see infrared or ultraviolet or polarized light like a mantis shrimp, and given what little we've seen of their artistic side they can definitely see and discriminate colour like a human or a bird can.

i'm looking at an article for pandora on the wiki and given what it says in the day-night cycle about how bright everything is all of the time, combined with the omnipresence of bioluminescence in everything, i'd say the biggest difference in vision between a human and a na'vi, or even a terran animal and a pandoran animal, is that the latter would have absolutely terrible night vision. just garbage ability to see in darkness. my kittens and dogs can see better in the dark than a na'vi can.

no need for eyes to develop extra sensitive rods or even a tapetum lucidum when it never gets darker than twilight

 

[Blazil]

Pandora's star, Alpha Centauri A, and Earth's star, the Sun, have the same stellar type (G2). So that means the two stars emit a comparable type of light. Therefore it can be expected that any species having evolved on Earth or Pandora will more or less see the same colors.

I do believe it had been said in canon that species such as the banshee / ikran see in more or less the same spectrum as human eyes (their primary eyes at least), so that would confirm my reasoning.

Also, Na'vi eyes, I believe, work optimally during the Pandoran night (eclipse). I would think they would be less suited to see in real darkness like on Earth, as already pointed out by Yrel.

If Pandora's star would have been vastly different, for example if it had been a red dwarf (stellar type M) then I would expect large differences in color perception for Pandoran species. They would be seeing more in infra-red (maybe like Predator-vision) . Also the leaves of plants would in that case have evolved differently and would likely be colored black as seen by humans.

 

[Soryu-ftu-äo]

Na'vi eyes are physically proportionally larger than ours, which means a greater light gathering ability, as well as better visual acuity, as large eyes are linked to better visual acuity among species on Earth. While Pandora has much bioluminescence and reflected light from its gas giant parent, it is also a very densely forested world with a dense, humid and very cloudy atmosphere. Tropical forests are quite dark, shadowy places, so though it may never be as dark as on Earth, it's also likely true that it's rarely, if ever, as bright either.

I suspect this would mean that Na'vi sight has evolved to being good at colour differentiation in gloomy but not dark conditions, instead of excellent night vision, as they rely heavily on spotting and identifying fruits and berries in the jungle. Bioluminescence also puts out light in specific wavelengths, making good colour sensitivity important. So my guess is they see a similar range of colours to us, but are much better at retaining full colour sensitivity in twilight/gloomy conditions when humans begin to lose colour perception, but that true night vision no better, and probably worse all round. I suspect their movement sensitivity is better, due to the need to detect threats and prey in subdued light in dense vegetation, though probably not by much.