Are you ready for some stupid lore? Cuz here’s a stupid lore dump!

I’m working on a worldbuilding project (which I post about on !worldbuilding@lemmy.world that involves aliens with a visual system that works very differently from humans.

They can see a much wider range of wavelengths than humans, from 12 micrometers up to UV-A. That’s a lot! The catch is they can’t see it all at once. Their eyes work more like radio receivers than cameras, and they have to “tune around” to different spectra in order to see the whole thing.

While they have subjective experiences similar to what humans call “color”, the color of objects is not fixed, and changes as their visual passband changes. If they tune away from an objects strongest reflected wavelength, it will appear black or gray. They’re neurologically incapable of conceiving of color as an independent quale separate from objects so colored, and their languages rely on analogies to familiar objects to describe colors rather than using words that describe the independent experience of color.