Scientists Have Found A Woman Whose Eyes Have A Whole New Type Of Colour Receptor

[Fweethawt]

http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-found-a-woman-whose-eyes-have-a-whole-new-type-of-colour-receptor

 

She sees 99 million colours more than the rest of us.

[Jeff]

It's almost like evolution is real or something

 

Very cool

[Thurisaz]

I wonder whether those extra receptors are at least partially tuned to frequencies outside what we normal folks can see. You know, infrared, UV... the article is totally silent on that sadly. Wouldn't it be cool to find that some people have natural IR vision?

[pantheory]

Yes this is very cool science report indeed but I think the story is somewhat exaggerated:  seeing 99 million more "colors" more than the rest of us?

 

The only testing discussed in the link was the ability to differentiate between 3 different colors in the dark. All I can guess from this is that maybe such a person could distinguish subtle hues of the same color under certain ambient conditions (such as in the dark) better than the rest of us. Although they did not mention or suggest infra-red or ultraviolet vision, seeing better in the dark would seem to relate to possibly enhanced infra-red vision as mentioned by Thurisaz.

 

I read in another report that Pacific Islanders, on some islands, have a high percentage of color blindness but of those that had it, many could see much better in the dark than normal. It seems that their third eye-cone related to better night vision rather than to color vision, maybe related to the 4th cone of the woman being tested in the above report.