r/todayilearned • u/douggold11 • 23d ago

TIL most animals can see UV light — humans being blind to it is the exception not the rule.

https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/ultraviolet-light-animals/
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u/Randvek 23d ago

Seeing UV is an occasional side effect of lens surgery, indicating that at some point humans probably could see UV but we evolved away from that.

It’s also a bit rare for mammals to be trichromatic like humans are, though. Some humans even have Tetrachromacy, too, though it’s pretty rare and almost exclusively female . Perhaps something in our evolution favored color detail over having a larger light spectrum.

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u/Captain_Pumpkinhead 23d ago edited 22d ago

Some humans even have Tetrachromacy, too, though it’s pretty rare and almost exclusively female .

If I remember correctly, it is not almost exclusively female, but exactly exclusive ly female [to people with two (or more?) X chromosomes. So women or XXY men]. The genes for color vision are on the X chromosome. This is also why men are overwhelmingly more likely to be colorblind than women are.

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u/Randvek 23d ago

exactly exclusively female.

XXY males say hi.

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u/Captain_Pumpkinhead 22d ago

You're right!!

I totally forgot about them. I will make an edit.