Reindeer’s blue eyes act as night vision goggles to help them find food in winter
Animals’ eyes change colour as colder months approach to enhance UV sight, helping them spot lichen vital for their survival
OK. We also know that blur eyes in humans are a recent genetic advance/deviation, so too is human colonisation of the Far North.
So and therefore, right?
“If they can see lichens from a distance, that gives them a big advantage, letting them conserve precious calories at a time when food is scarce.”
Idk if human vision is similar to deer, the little fuckers always want to jump in front of your car (deer, not humans)
They are prey animals, we are predators.
Blue eyes is an absence of pigment, isn’t it?
At various times, people have said I have blue eyes & at other times green. When forms ask for “colour of eyes?” should I put “undecided”?
“We also know that blur eyes in humans are a recent genetic advance/deviation…”
Maybe the next evolutionary step will be oasis eyes. I wonder what they’ll look like. 😉
Maybe the next evolutionary step will be oasis eyes
I said Maybe.
the little fuckers always want to jump in front of your car (deer, not humans)
So the Stop Oil nutters are really deer in disguise?
asiaseen – idk, those JSO people look a bit gamey to me.
But it’s better than eating insects.
“blur eyes in humans are a recent genetic advance”
I’m genetically advanced, me.
“Guardian Journo Botches Journalling a Scientific Article” , news at 11….
actual article here
It’s not their eye colour, but the colour of the tapetum lucidum, the reflective layer at the back of their eyes, that changes colour..
Which makes a whole lot of more sense, and the notion that it makes them see UV-absorbing lichen in the snow under twilight conditions as a lot darker than we would see them quite plausible.
And a hell of a lot more logical/interesting as an adaptation.
Us Whiteys evolved our blue/grey iris ( + several other, less visible anti-UV adaptations) during the last two Ice Ages to actually block UV better, because lower latitudes + snow/ice = much more UV irradiation than Up North = recipe for snow-blindness..
As many a Tourist in the Alps has found out to their “enjoyment”…
Thank you Grikath. I suspected this was nonsense, good to have it explained.
Pale skin in humans is an adaptation to a low sunlight / low vit D environment. Blue eyes are probably a bi-product of the loss of melanin. The colour of human eyes come from the iris, which is that thing that dilates or contracts to let more or less light in. So nothing to do with seeing UV (we can’t, no more than Greta Thunberg can see CO2). Birds can see in part of the UV spectrum but most mammals are pretty colour blind. Dogs and bulls are practically monochrome.
@philip – “seeing UV (we can’t”
We almost can. The retina can detect UV, but the lens blocks it. So if the lens is removed (and, possibly, replaced with an artificial one that is UV transparent), humans can see UV.
Sorry philip, have to stop you there….
pale skin= a diminished number of melanophores per square inch of skin. Our melanophores ( and melanin) are more or less the same as those found in Africans. We simply have far less of them.
It’s the Asians that have a slightly different melanin type.
Blue eyes have preciously little to do with any “loss” of melanin. The proteins that give colour to our irises aren’t even related to melanin. They’re several mass extinctions more ancient, and in a different branch.
Most importantly…. They’re not water-soluble like melanin…
You really don’t want to have any melanin in your eye. It’d get all over the place and blind you in the end..
They do seem to be linked, because they are part of a specific DNA “library” that tends to get inherited as a single unit. Pretty conservative as well.
But each of the genes in that library have their own origin and variations..
We also can see UV light perfectly fine, thankyou.. It’s just that we can’t see UV light specifically.
UV photons will trigger all photoreceptors if they hit them. It’s just that they damage the pigments as they do it…
The effect is roughly the same as turning up the Gamma in a game, or turning up brightness and contrast to ridiculous levels on a TV: the overall image gets brighter, but colour washes out. ( and the screen will reach EOL a lot sooner…)
Because of this, it’s actually perfectly possible to see in a dark room with just UV light.
Unwise and very much unrecommended, as I can attest to having made that mistake in my more bashful Youf, “just quickly popping in” a lab that was already closed up for the night to pick up some stuff I forgot, but perfectly possible..
It’s just like slightly itchy moonlight.