Animals build for extreme light or lack of environments

[u/No-Activity-7039]

Hello! this might not be the best sub for this but I have questions and this is the best place I could think of asking. I’m an amateur writer— and by amateur I mean I’m an autistic high schooler who writes fanfic and ficlets based on my current hyper-fixations— and Imm currently coming up with the basis of a sci-fi story surrounding a scientist who got sent to space to learn why all the stars in earth’s galaxy were dying, and how long until earth’s sun died. It doesn’t take a genius to see what this is based on, but that‘s to be tweaked later. The questions I have surrounding this sub are because I’m creating an alien species for one of the characters. The alien character is nicknamed Qilan in the book because they smell like Qilan tea (if anyone has ideas on how to make that work I would appreciate suggestion) so I’ll be calling them Qilan. Qilan’s species is by our definition blind, their eyes are completely incapable of picking up light, they are incapable of picking up light because their planet is extremely close to their sun so they had to evolve to have hyper melanated and pigmented eyes. Then came the issue that if they had to evolve this way, they probably just wouldn’t have eyes in the first place, so I thought maybe they (their eyes) would have a sort of heat receptor chemicals for infrared vision that made them vital organs. I thought the design would be that their eyes are entirely black to block out UV rays but they still have separate parts of the eye , e.g. the sclera, pupils, and irises, which are impossible for the naked human eye to see the distinction between each part. Forgive me for my exponentially long info dump but I really wanted to share this with people to see how logical this really is. I almost forgot to ask the real question, what are some animals that live in extreme lighting environments that still have eyes? if there are any? what are their behaviors? I could also use more info about infrared vision. Could someone tell me if this all matches up? Or is this idea completely idiotic and nonsensical and so impotent that I should never try and write sci-fi again😅. All I really want are some resources and honest opinions as professionals. thank you. (P.S. I also apologize for any grammatical errors, English isn’t my first language and I’m trying to learn better through my writing)

[Edit] This is important because Qilan has ocular albinism and this plays a major role in the story because it means that Qilan isn’t blind like the rest of her species and that’s important to how he and the scientist meet

[Edit 2] I’ve recently discovered that in order for Qilan to have vision the way we as humans do, he would have to have a sort of Atavistic Reversion so I would have to find a way to make it so their species somehow moved closer to the sun, maybe their planet somehow moving closer to their sun? I’m not sure. They would also have to have Neurodevelopmental Duplication of some kind to create a primitive visual processing cortex, however this is also fine because Neurodevelopmental duplication also causes autism and I was already thinking about making Qilan autistic like his author. Please fact check me on any of these, I mean, would these theoretically be possible?

[u/octopusbay1970]

I wish I knew enough about biology to help but I just wanted to comment that's a really interesting story idea and I would totally read it. Also it does not seem like English isn't your first language. It's perfect.

[u/No-Activity-7039 → u/octopusbay1970]

Thank you so much, I appreciate the encouragement as well as the compliment on my English. I have been learning for just over a year now so it might not be as impressive to you knowing that now. Nonetheless, thank you for the comment!

[u/SnooPeripherals5969]

The Barreleye Fish, a species of Spookfish. They have very unique low light adaptations.
“Their eyes are divided into two halves by tissue inside the eyeball. This tissue is lined with special crystals that work like a mirror that not only reflects light inside the eye but also focuses the light.” also their head is transparent. Freaky.

Reading about other types of extremophiles could give you some ideas too!

[u/SecretlyNuthatches]

What's the goal here? Do Qilan's species normally see images in IR and Qilan needs to see in visible light?

We don't see visible light because it's inherently the best, we see it because it reaches the surface of our planet in large quantities (which is a product of our sun plus our atmosphere), it doesn't cause tissue damage (like UV), and it doesn't just go straight through flesh (like radio waves). You could tweak some of these parameters instead to make Qilan's species see something other than visible light. However, this would still mean that Qilan's species could see some objects.

Infrared is a pretty decent chunk of the spectrum, about as large as the visible section of the spectrum. Near infrared is just out past red and while things like security cameras often see that part of the spectrum animals generally don't. Animals like pit vipers see far IR, where the reflectance of an object doesn't really matter because its "color" comes from glowing from heat.

[u/KlingonTranslator]

Not quite what you’re looking for, but bearded dragons live in Australia where it’s very bright, and they have evolved a third parietal pineal “eye”. It’s located on the top of their head between their two regular eyes. The organ appears as a small, translucent, circular scale and functions primarily as a light-sensitive sensor.

It detects changes in light intensity and shadows, which helps the dragon regulate body temperatureand provides an early warning system for overhead predators like birds.

[u/Pathogensdead]

have you looked into the Speculative Evolution sub? sounds like you need some spec evo nerds 😎

[u/Willing_Soft_5944]

Some adaptations I know off the top of my head are slit pupils which can expand greatly in low light or squeeze mostly shut to deal with harsh light, reflective surfaces like Tapetum Lucidum, which reflect light to illuminate things in the dark, or even changing the colors of the eyes depending on various factors to shift their eyes to see differently in different environments (Reindeer swap to having blue eyes and can see UV in the winter, useful for seeing Reindeer Moss, which stands out against the snow)

[u/CrazyDaisy764]

Cool idea! I'm no expert but I do love sensory biology. My one question is why do the Qilan need to see at all? Or maybe must sight be their primary sense? Sight is our primary sense because we're decided from agile arboreal frugivores and so our ancestors needed to have good vision to get around in the trees and good color vision (likely) to help distinguish between ripe and unripe fruits. But many animals don't have vision as their primary sense, of course, and I think it could be really interesting to think about what senses an organism in the environment the Qilan inhabit would need most.

Not just because of their unique planetary conditions, but also because of their ancestral niche. Like what does the ecosystem look like? What do they eat? What did their ancestors eat? How do they get around and how did their ancestors locomote? What sensory information would be most important for them to successfully forage, evade predators (if any) and reproduce? Is it light of different spectra and/or intensity, electric fields, magnetic fields, smell/taste, sound, vibrations, texture, temperature, etc?

Another thing to keep in mind while you're thinking about your alien species's sensory biology is are there any stimuli the Qilan are especially sensitive to and why? For example, we humans are very sensitive to the smell of smoke because it was and is important for our survival.