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SkyKnight34 t1_iwv1rmp wrote

Reply to comment by jsshouldbeworking in do we know how chameleons "see" Things with two independent eyes? Is it integrated? Side by side? by VivendusMoriendumEst

This is really good. I think depth perception is another good thought experiment that illustrates this. Imagine explaining to a chameleon how we use the differences in parallax between each eye to estimate depth. We're not consciously doing trigonometry to determine how far away things are, we can just tell. It's baked in to the map of the world our brain generates from the signals.

Chameleons moving their eyes independently is the same for them, it just looks normal. Their brains are adapted to process a different variety of signals than ours. It's just hard for us to "picture" it, since our vision has some different underlying assumptions built into it. But ultimately, it's probably a decent assumption to imagine that they "see things" the same way we do, just with a worse depth perception and a wider field of view.

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jsshouldbeworking t1_iwvhp1y wrote

Yes!

And if you have ever seen a skink/chameleon/lizard bounce up and down (looks like doing pushups), they are doing the same thing that we do with our two eyes. They move their head to two different positions, and use the paralax to figure out what is in the 'depth' dimension. (Some people also say that they do this in courtship or for displays of dominance, which could also be true.)

It's like the GIFs that alternate between two perspectives to show depth, like this

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dupe123 t1_iwvnd7e wrote

In spanish, pushups are called lagartijas, which comes from the spanish word for lizard (lagarto).

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VivendusMoriendumEst OP t1_ixkmsbc wrote

I'm in an extra different situation in a way. I'm aphantasic (can't imagine/picture/recall visual stuff, nor taste, smell, touch, or otherwise, though my faculty with audio is extraordinary and from what I can tell far beyond typical (I'd trade some for vision tho...)

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SkyKnight34 t1_ixkrjgs wrote

It's so fascinating how our brains have such a variety of abilities, isn't it? It makes me wonder how it affects the way we function in general. Like I know that the way I think and conceptualize things is strongly informed by visualizations. And I'm sure that visualization lends itself more toward certain concepts than others, by its nature. It seems like you probably do the same thing with audio, and I'm sure that that lends itself more naturally toward a slightly (or maybe significantly) different set of representations and ideas. It's just so interesting to consider how we're both looking at the same world through these two different lenses, and probably notice very different things about the world because of it.

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