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The red and green specialists: why human colour vision is so odd

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Re: The red and green specialists: why human colour vision is so odd

#21

Post by simoom22 »

rowyourboat wrote: post #6

> Instead of having good vision, dogs, horses, mice, antelope – in fact, most mammals generally – have long damp snouts that they use to sniff things with. It is we humans, and apes and monkeys, who are different. What a load of bull. Dogs and wolves eyes are facing forward, as do cats', owls', jumping spiders' main eyes, and generally those of most hunting predators. Eyes facing forward is good for depth perception…

All primates having forward facing eyes, but lemurs and sloths are only apex predators if you're a berry.

Re: The red and green specialists: why human colour vision is so odd

#22

Post by [deleted] »

rowyourboat wrote: post #6

> Instead of having good vision, dogs, horses, mice, antelope – in fact, most mammals generally – have long damp snouts that they use to sniff things with. It is we humans, and apes and monkeys, who are different. What a load of bull. Dogs and wolves eyes are facing forward, as do cats', owls', jumping spiders' main eyes, and generally those of most hunting predators. Eyes facing forward is good for depth perception…

[deleted]

Re: The red and green specialists: why human colour vision is so odd

#23

Post by rowyourboat »

simoom22 wrote: post #21
rowyourboat wrote: post #6

> Instead of having good vision, dogs, horses, mice, antelope – in fact, most mammals generally – have long damp snouts that they use to sniff things with. It is we humans, and apes and monkeys, who are different. What a load of bull. Dogs and wolves eyes are facing forward, as do cats', owls', jumping spiders' main eyes, and generally those of most hunting predators. Eyes facing forward is good for depth perception…

All primates having forward facing eyes, but lemurs and sloths are only apex predators if you're a berry.

Evolution is not straightforward. If a carnivore changes to a plant-based diet, chances are some carnivore traits are going to remain, if they are not too hardly selected against. See panda bears, fruit bats, ...

Re: The red and green specialists: why human colour vision is so odd

#24

Post by rowyourboat »

geon wrote: post #20
rowyourboat wrote: post #6

> Instead of having good vision, dogs, horses, mice, antelope – in fact, most mammals generally – have long damp snouts that they use to sniff things with. It is we humans, and apes and monkeys, who are different. What a load of bull. Dogs and wolves eyes are facing forward, as do cats', owls', jumping spiders' main eyes, and generally those of most hunting predators. Eyes facing forward is good for depth perception…

Dog have worse resolution, color perception and depth perception than humans. http://servicedogcentral.org/content/node/391

I was contesting the statement that forward-facing eyes somehow make us special. They don't. They are a trait we share with most predators.

Re: The red and green specialists: why human colour vision is so odd

#25

Post by autokad »

vanderZwan wrote: post #10

As a colour-blind person, this article both makes sense to me, and at the same time it doesn't. I have often wondered why human colour vision is not evenly distributed across the spectrum of visible light. This seems like a decent enough model for why that might be the case. However, that makes it very peculiar that there are so many people with colour-blindness like me, especially if it would be such a strong evolut…

i think the social species and specialization both plays a role, but we also have gender specialization. colorblindness effects 8% of men, but only .5% of women. maybe the men have less pressure to select ripe fruit / see social cues. i understand this is because of the x/y chromosome effect, but maybe since it barely effects women its not a strong enough evolutionary pressure to wipe colorblindness out completely.

Re: The red and green specialists: why human colour vision is so odd

#26

Post by rhn_mk1 »

dingo_bat wrote: post #7
pablode wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Url is optimized for mobile (and without the banner). This one is more suited for desktop use [1]. [1] https://aeon.co/ideas/the-red-and-green-specialists-why-huma...

Interestingly, this link works properly on both mobile and desktop. Wonder why the original link is even needed.

To avoid loading the images with the page. They appear later through a JS mechanism (to the disappointment of noscripters).

Re: The red and green specialists: why human colour vision is so odd

#27

Post by geon »

rowyourboat wrote: post #24
geon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dog have worse resolution, color perception and depth perception than humans. http://servicedogcentral.org/content/node/391

I was contesting the statement that forward-facing eyes somehow make us special. They don't. They are a trait we share with most predators.

The eyes of dogs are less forward facing than on humans.

Re: The red and green specialists: why human colour vision is so odd

#28

Post by codeulike »

vanderZwan wrote: post #10

As a colour-blind person, this article both makes sense to me, and at the same time it doesn't. I have often wondered why human colour vision is not evenly distributed across the spectrum of visible light. This seems like a decent enough model for why that might be the case. However, that makes it very peculiar that there are so many people with colour-blindness like me, especially if it would be such a strong evolut…

I have often wondered why human colour vision is not evenly distributed across the spectrum of visible light.

Daniell Dennett (I think?) had a good explanation of this:

Q: Why is the sky blue? A: Because leaves are green and berries are red

That is: our colour perception evolved in a particular environment and is optimised towards doing well in that environment by contrasting things that we care about (in that environment).

Re: The red and green specialists: why human colour vision is so odd

#29

Post by dghughes »

rowyourboat wrote: post #6

> Instead of having good vision, dogs, horses, mice, antelope – in fact, most mammals generally – have long damp snouts that they use to sniff things with. It is we humans, and apes and monkeys, who are different. What a load of bull. Dogs and wolves eyes are facing forward, as do cats', owls', jumping spiders' main eyes, and generally those of most hunting predators. Eyes facing forward is good for depth perception…

The best eyes/most complex eyes in the world goes to the mantis shrimp. http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/07/03/natures-m...

A few snippets:

a compound eye, made of thousands of small units that each detects light independently

12 to 16 different photoreceptors in its midband

has six photoreceptors dedicated to...UV

incredibly sophisticated UV detectors

Re: The red and green specialists: why human colour vision is so odd

#30

Post by bsanderson »

It would be interesting to design a UI colour scheme specifically with this in mind, with strategic use of red vs green for focusing attention in a way that parallels the eye's natural biological tuning, as a similar approach to accessibility UI design for colour-blindness.

If anyone knows anything like that that's been tried I'd be really interested.

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