Animals that see ultraviolet light

Humans cannot see ultraviolet: our shortest-wavelength cone peaks near 420 nm, and the lens of the adult eye absorbs most UV before it reaches the retina. Many animals can. In our catalogue, 16 of 46 species have a light receptor that peaks in the ultraviolet, below 400 nm — insects, fish, a mantis shrimp, a mouse, a bat, reptiles, a spider and a hummingbird among them.

Animals with an ultraviolet receptor

AnimalShortest receptor peakAll receptor peaks
Mantis shrimp 315 nm 315 / 500 / 700 nm
Honeybee 344 nm 344 / 436 / 544 nm
Housefly 345 nm 345 / 435 / 490 nm
Moth 350 nm 350 / 440 / 525 nm
Dragonfly 350 nm 350 / 440 / 520 / 620 nm
Goldfish 356 nm 356 / 447 / 537 / 620 nm
Mouse 360 nm 360 / 508 nm
Butterfly 360 nm 360 / 440 / 530 / 610 nm
Jumping spider 360 nm 360 / 530 nm
Zebrafish 362 nm 362 / 415 / 480 / 570 nm
Gecko 364 nm 364 / 467 / 521 nm
Bat 365 nm 365 / 550 nm
Hummingbird 370 nm 370 / 450 / 510 / 560 nm
Chameleon 375 nm 375 / 450 / 505 / 565 nm
Common carp 377.5 nm 377.5 / 458 / 532 / 600 nm
Clownfish 386 nm 386 / 497 / 535 nm

What ultraviolet shows them

Bees and flowers

The honeybee's receptors peak near 344, 436, 544 nm: ultraviolet, blue and green, with nothing tuned to red. Its colour world is shifted towards short wavelengths compared with ours. Many flowers carry ultraviolet patterns — nectar guides — invisible to us but plain to a bee, and a mix of ultraviolet and yellow gives bees a colour we have no name for, often called "bee purple". Red, by contrast, looks dark to a bee.

Mice and other small mammals

The mouse's short-wavelength cone peaks near 360 nm, in the ultraviolet, alongside a second cone near 508 nm, in a retina dominated by rods. Among the mammals in our catalogue, only the mouse and the bat carry a receptor tuned that far into the ultraviolet; dogs, cats, horses and most others have their shortest cone in the blue or violet instead.

Reindeer and the Arctic winter

Reindeer are an unusual case: their cones are not ultraviolet cones, but their eyes let ultraviolet through and their retina responds to it. In the Arctic, where snow reflects ultraviolet strongly, that makes lichen — the reindeer's winter food — and the fur of predators stand out as dark against bright snow. It is why the reindeer appears here as a special case rather than in the table above.

Birds: violet rather than ultraviolet

Birds have four cone types and are often described as seeing ultraviolet. Many do, the hummingbird in the table above among them, but a large group — including the birds of prey in our catalogue — are violet-sensitive instead, with a shortest cone between 400 and 430 nm. In our catalogue that group is: eagle, pigeon, chicken, duck, penguin and Indian peafowl. Their colour space still reaches further towards short wavelengths than ours, and coloured oil droplets on their cones sharpen how finely they separate hues.

Why no screen can show ultraviolet. A phone screen has only red, green and blue emitters, and a phone camera filters ultraviolet out before it reaches the sensor. Any "UV view", ours included, maps the invisible band onto a colour you can see so the effect can be understood. It is a visualisation, not a reproduction.

Sources

See it through their eyes

Animal Vision applies these same vision models to your phone camera in real time.

Download on the App Store Get it on Google Play

© 2026 Animal Vision · animalvision.app

ÁlvaroAnimal EarsLure DepthNewborn Vision