Reindeer use UV light to survive in the wild

Links: - Research paper in Journal of Experimental Biology - Professor Glen Jeffery - UCL Institute of Ophthalmology UCL researchers have discovered that reindeer can not only see ultraviolet (UV) light, but that it is also crucial to their survival in the harsh arctic environment. A UCL team, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, has published a paper today (12 May) in the Journal of Experimental Biology , which shows that this remarkable visual ability allows them to take in life-saving information in conditions where normal mammalian vision would make them vulnerable to starvation, predators and territorial conflict. Click on the player below for an audio slideshow - Winter conditions in the arctic mean that the sun barely rises in the middle of the day and light is scattered such that the majority of light that reaches objects is blue or UV. In addition to this, snow can reflect up to 90% of the UV light that falls on it. Glen Jeffery, Professor of Neuroscience at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, was the lead researcher on the project. He said: 'We discovered that reindeer can not only see ultraviolet light but they can also make sense of the image to find food and stay safe. Humans and almost all other mammals could never do this as our lenses just don't let UV through into the eye.' Humans are able to see light with wavelengths ranging from around 700 nanometres (nm), which corresponds to the colour red, right through all the colours of the rainbow in sequence to 400nm, which corresponds to violet.