this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2024
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Today I Learned (TIL)
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And red/green color blindness isn't less colors, you get more shades of brown.
Which sounds shitty, but invaluable for hunters.
My dad legitimately didn't know what other people saw for "red" but he could spot a deer in the middle of the woods like it was neon yellow.
I believe the downside to tetracheomacy is less rods because the extra cones are taking up more space. Which I think translates to really bad night vision.
Cool! I had never heard about this theory for explaining color blindness.
There's very few things that are a flat negative evolutionarily.
Like sickle cell, in most of the world it's a significant disease. But if you live somewhere with malaria before modern medicine, then for 99.9999% of human existence, you'd be dead at a young age without sickle cell in those places.
Or how appendix bursting was worth the risk of retaining gut bacteria. Once we got clean water, the adaption of not having an appendix started to spread. Until modern surgery took out the negative evolutionary pressure so humans will be stuck with appendixes for ever now.
I'm heterozygous for cystic fibrosis. It fucked my plans for having kids, cause I don't have vas deferens. (Most people who are heterozygous don't have any problems, but some men do with fertility). But apparently heterozygous people are more resistant to cholera and dysentery, since our cells hold onto water easier.