Some Of You Can See The Invisible

[@SciShow]

Visit brilliant.org/scishow/ to get started learning STEM for free. The first 200 people will get 20% off their annual premium subscription and a 30-day free trial.

[@beepboop204]

🙂🙂

[@dvision4203]

The fog is coming

[@alto7183]

Buen video, si un día hay mutaciones, evolución o edición genética, será más útil ver el infrarrojo, mal ejemplo como usar gio de hunter x hunter para ver en todo lo biológico un tipo de color transparente emanando de lo vivo, opinión personal.

[@Ice_Karma]

0:30 "High Enrergy" and "Low Enrergy". Oops. ♥

[@Mistfall254]

Slight nod 2 the creator of the universe tho u dont have 2 agree on that

[@johncochran8497]

As regards aphakia, there's an interesting bit of trivia. During World War II, an ophthalmologist discovered that his cataract patients could see into the ultraviolet. He brought up that information to the US government just in case it was useful to them. The government ran with it. What they did was provide UV lights to the resistance in Europe and supply flights were made at night when someone who had cataract surgery would point out to the pilot where the light was so they could make supply drops to the resistance. Meanwhile, German pilots were unable to detect where the supply drops were.

[@Dee-ty9ny]

I wonder, does this aphakia condition affect how bright an led light looks to someone?

[@spvillano]

Wasn't only aphakia cases though. I see the whitish-blue for UV-A, such as from "blacklights", a rosy-ish violet for UV-C. That was when I still had my natural lens and even more so now that my cataracts were removed and plastic, uncoated lenses were implanted. Oddly, I don't seem to see UV-B. From what a biologist said, he thought it was a fluorescence going on that downconverts the UV. That'd make some sense, save that only UV-A tends to give me a blue-white-out condition, fogging vision out painfully, UV-C remains part of the image and doesn't have that issue. I'm thinking that the receptor's pigment proteins just have a slightly wider response range. I've also noticed that the fluorescent security features on US currency is exceptionally bright to me since my natural lenses were removed. Somewhat related, the IOL (intraocular lens implant) used today in cataract replacement surgery was also created by an alert ophthalmologist, who observed during WWII that air corps patients that had the perspex windscreen blown into their eyes entirely failed to experience irritation or rejection. A bit of study and perfecting it and the IOL was born. The first patient he had observed that lack of inflammation or rejection in eventually receiving an IOL by him. That patient finally died of old age in 2016. Still, it was an odd comment by the host in the video on harmful effects of UV on the eye, as there has been no reported harmful effects of natural light UV exposure in aphakic patients to be found in the medical literature. One only sees harm when excess exposure occurs, similar to sunburn, albeit with no healing possible in retinal damage cases and UV-C is entirely absent in the lower atmosphere, it being mildly ionizing, it gets filtered entirely by the ionosphere.

[@spvillano]

@@samarnadra yeah, it gets dazzling in the subtropics. I spent 5 years in the Persian Gulf region, I still have my WileyX sunglasses, which can nearly double as welding goggles. Cost me a war price, but they were worth the expense! That dazzle effect actually triggers a scintillating scotoma, basically, a painless migraine in me at times. Polarized lenses helped reduce that, but nothing can completely eliminate it. The IOL tinting is more for UV protection, as far as I can tell. For damaged vision and it returning, that's actually due to neurotoxicity due to overstimulation. Injured nerves that receive stimulation or excess stimulation too early die, allow them to recover and everything is fine. I've never met someone with aniridia. It is quite rare, thankfully so. Yeah, zero control, save with either super dark tinted glasses or adapting things like changing paper/display characteristics to a darker scheme can be effective and the dark tinted glasses, a nuisance when changing light levels, such as outdoors to indoors.

[@vincentdreemurr]

weaponized eye disease

[@Benzinilinguine]

I refuse to believe that successful eye surgery happened in the 1940s. Especially on a large scale.

[@Tusuratopia]

My wife is a Tetrachromat and sees farther into the UV spectrum. She see's pinks in the sky on a clear day with just blue according to my eyes. She can "See" sunlight when there's nothing for me to see. It's been quite a ride over the years with her expressing that my black shorts are actually blue, or my red shirt has splotches of purple. It's so interesting being able to see it happen first hand. Unfortunately she's also has a double astigmatism and very poor eyesight in general.

[@kathyjohnson2043]

I wonder if the 2 are related 🤔

[@DenizenoftheAges]

That actually sounds really amazing and cool. Congratulations.

[@POTATOEMPN]

Me too, actually. I can see in nearly 20% lighting. Most people can only get fine detail at about 35%. I also have 20/15 vision. Buuuut I also have Lupus. And the strangest part? Biological male, but all of those things are most seen only in women.

[@solsystem1342]

​@@kathyjohnson2043 no, one is color receptors the other is eye lens shape

[@TheNoodlyAppendage]

@@POTATOEMPN I can read by the light of the full moon. Also a male tetrachromat. My mother and her sisters are all tetrachromats as well, and they refused to accept that men can have it too when i was a kid.

[@MrChazz10]

Some people also hear things that others don't. In highschool, whenever I was in the library, I could hear a high pitched sound, going up and down, like a sine wave. It never changed in frequency and was always the same. I walked around the library narrowing down it's location and it was coming from a network server up near the ceiling all the way across the library from where we were sitting. All the computers were connected to it. I asked just about everyone if they could hear it, and no one could. Even when we were in the adjoining auditorium I could hear it, and it was louder if the connecting door was open. I even pointed to the thing and asked them if they could hear the sound coming from it. I must have seemed crazy😄 It didn't matter if the library was noisy or quiet, I could hear it. I still hear similar sounds when certain electronics are on and with my door shut I can usually tell if the TV in the living room is on, which is on the other side of my cement bedroom wall. TV will be turned down, so I can't hear, and it's light doesn't reach my door in the hall. But I can "hear" that it's on.

[@MrChazz10]

I also used to work in a paint shop and we also did colour matching. Sometimes, we had to do it by eye and I could always tell which colours were needed just by looking very closely at the sample. I don't know if I have any special cone cells and certain that I have lenses in my eyes 😄 but I always find shiny and colourful things and have even found gems and deep purple opals that just stood out to me but were hard to see for a friend. And it all started with a purple glint in the corner of my vision one day, when I bent down to look what it was, it was a teeny tiny vein of opal in a rock, of which I now have a jarful😆

[@camerica7400]

I notice all kinds of tiny noises like this, I believe they must be bad for people to always listen to. A fun experiment you can test is if you can hear any noise in your home/apartment flip the main breaker and cut power to everything, it gets insanely quite and the air seems calmer.

[@MrChazz10]

@camerica7400 yes. I've noticed that when there's been power outages or when in rural areas where there's no electricity. I've heard the scream of silence😅 I'm usually away from electronics for most of the day. I work outdoors doing gardening and landscaping.

[@kirinschlabitz4085]

yeah they're so obnoxious, I can hear lights and TVs and servers and computers and all kinds of things that other people seem to be either unable to hear, or able to ignore. My aunt and grandparents used those high pitched devices to scare off mice, and it was so annoying I had to unplug them or I couldn't sleep. It is so refreshing being able to go somewhere truly silent, or at least with only birds and bugs and such making noise. I'd guess it's probably part of why I and so many others seem to have frequent headaches.

[@johnnarogers5636]

I'm the same way. My mom even banned those electric mouse deterrents because she could hear them when they're supposed to be silent.

[@gabbyn978]

It took a long time for me until I understood that this very pale lavender colour on some surfaces was invisible to most others. This colour even caused issues for me, when I once was told to seek out a newly built house in grey, which for me was a kind of weak purple.

[@Brendawallingbear]

Most grays have some kind of color in them, it's rarely just black and white mixed together. Also, everything that's white also has a tiny bit of color difference, which is so obvious to me.

[@cjdelphi]

You could be borderline synesthesia

[@noveltyjerusalem]

< synesthesia isnt that.

[@zachcrawford5]

I had both lenses removed when I was a baby and see UV. Like she said, it looks blue,gray,violet, I not sure if the exact wavelength of the light has an effect on this but I suspect it does). Some cloudy days can actually be a bit intense because even though clouds can block UV they also scatter it everywhere. Black lights are actually quite bright looking to me. I didn't know they looked dark to everyone else until someone complained that they couldn't really see where they were going in a room mostly lit by black lights. The contacts I wear now block a lot of UV so though it feels like I'm missing some colours but I'm sure my retinas are happier for it.

[@rainydaylady6596]

Is it possible to have new lenses? I had cataract surgery a few months ago and have new lenses.

[@zachcrawford5]

@@rainydaylady6596 Congratulations on getting your sight back, that's awesome:) My cataracts were removed when I was a baby (back in the 1980s), so I'm not sure if I was just too young, the medical tech wasn't quite there yet or if for other reasons I just wasn't a good candidate for that (or some combination of those reasons). Either way, the muscles in my eyes that would have be used to focus a lens never learned how to do so and have atrophied long ago. So replacing the lense would serve no more purpose than a contact lens does for me and a contact lense can be swapped out for new ones as needed or for something else should something better come along.

[@kirinschlabitz4085]

WAIT THAT'S WHY THEY'RE BLACK LIGHTS?? They're actually supposed to be darker not like obnoxious bright purple???

[@johaquila]

@@kirinschlabitz4085 They are supposed to be black / no lights at all in the usual sense. The idea is that the only thing you can see with them is stuff that reflects UV light with a lower, visible frequency. There is clothing that makes use of this effect.

[@SpringStarFangirl]

Wait, other people don't see black lights as just bright purple???

[@emoore29681]

Hi there! Tetrachromat here! I always thought it was strange that I could tell the difference between colors my peers said were the same - especially when the differences were often very obvious to me, if at times difficult to describe. I didn't know until just a couple of years ago, when I was getting some broad spectrum genetic testing done for other conditions, that I had a version of the mutation you talked about. Very cool to see it mentioned in one of your videos!

[@nicholasvinen]

You should invent names for the different colours you can see!

[@umi3017]

I have a question for you (and all Tetrachromats alike), when watching a photo on a normal RGB screen, or a CMYK printed paper, would it be different from the real thing you see? Very different or some subtle difference ? Thanks!

[@05degrees]

@@umi3017 Though one should consider that there are always subtle differences even for trichromats, that are usually just adapted over. So there should be checks for both, especially considering that photos of things are often made with cameras that have not the most faithful sensors, so it makes some things’ colors off, like usually deep blues and purples can end up more chromatic than they look like to the photographer. Many variables to consider. But I’m still sad I know no tetrachromats in person, it’d be an enlightening experience to talk to them about how they see different things.

[@ZentaBon]

@@nicholasvinen YEAH THAT WOULD BE SO COOL

[@ZentaBon]

Name the colors anyway! I'm sure people see colors slightly differently regardless

[@juliavixen176]

I have a black cat, and when I was doing infrared photography, I discovered that she is actually has two different colors of infrared stripes. (Imagine an orange striped cat, but with black stripes on a black background.) Anyway, knowing what to look for, you can actually see her stripes when she's laying down in bright sunlight... It's two different shades of black.

[@glossaria2]

Cool! That's like black panthers... they're not solid black, either. They're actually black-coated leopards (or jaguars, depending on the continent), whose spots show up in UV or strong sunlight.

[@scottfw7169]

Brings to mind a black cat a friend had about a decade and a half back, she looked plain black most of the time but when lying in a sunny spot at the right angle she appeared to have black and brownish-black tiger stripes.

[@ElBach1y]

my black kitty is also striped :D

[@bforman1300]

Yes! I've been referring to my black cats as melanistic tabbies for decades

[@chrisinnes2128]

I had a black dog that was the same

[@reneryan8427]

I'm aphakic in one eye so I see UV normally with one eye (dark, dim purple) and abnormally in the other (bright blue-white). So to me when there's a strong UV source around, I can spot it right away...not because I'm particularly special but because seeing a different color with each eye creates a rapid strobe-light effect which is hard to ignore.

[@metamorphicorder]

Its tough not having completely bilateral vision. I have a strabismus and slightly different perception of color between the two. Everything is slightly bluer with my left eye. Also i always have double vision.

[@Jimera0]

That must be rather unpleasant to look at huh lol

[@AVeryCasualGamerGirl]

I didn’t know this was a thing. I’ve been slightly double visioned for years and when I tried to describe why, one side sees blues bluer and the other sees the warm colors deeper, everyone just looked at me like I was weird..

[@juliavixen176]

I deliberately had a pair of polarized sunglasses created with the left and right eyes rotated 90° apart in polarization angle. Walking around I could instantly see every source of polarized light... because it would be flashing between bright and dark as my brain tried to combine the two images from my two eyes. Every glass window on every building is reflecting polarized light for example... so it's no wonder that insects (and some birds?) are getting confused about where to find water. (The reflections off any surface of water are also polarized.)

[@iprobablyforgotsomething]

@Sable Reaper -- Me, too! I thought it was normal for everyone to have one eye see cooler colours better, and the other, warmer. That it was just part of how we hoomins get a full appreciation of the colour spectrum on any given ordinary day.

[@zeykriid]

ayyyy I’m a tetrachromat! I could tell many stories but for now I’ll just say that as a kid I was always super confused as to why everyone colored leaves on trees only green in drawings. they look green to me, but with an undertone of orange/red or blue/purple (depending on plant species)

[@FelixTheAnimator]

Right! "Oh how do you tell that one is an oak at this distance?" It's leaves are warmer? "That's a maple?" Yeeees.... Can you not tell? The colors are different.

[@Jimera0]

Oh that's super neat, so you perceive the pigments that the rest of us only see in the autumn underneath the chlorophyl green that usually overwhelms it for the rest of us huh?

[@juliavixen176]

Are you sure that you have two copies of the red-green opsin gene? Because tetrachromatism actually manifests as *worse* ability to distinguish long wavelength colors. My sister has it, and is red-green colorblind. (Like our father.) (What's really weird is that I have normal human color vision myself, because I should have inherited the broken red-green opsin gene from my father too.) Anyway, if you have really good colors vision, then you probably have the variant of the red-green opsin pigment gene with the greatest separation between the sensitivity peaks in the red and green wavelengths.

[@Furiends]

This Easter we hid green eggs in the grass. Plastic colors are notorious for being florescent as well. So while others might see that brighter green egg as just a sunny spot in the grass I see a friggen flashlight in the grass. Guess who got the most eggs in the hunt?

[@zeykriid]

@Lucas de sousa yo no way me too

[@Arterexius]

Tetrachromat explains why I often have to stop up for a sec, because I spot a color difference. The part of the two X chromosomes being responsible is also a great explanation as to why I, a man, can do it. I am born with a chronic condition called Klinefelters, which for my chromosomes mean that I'm not a normal XY, but instead an XXY. I have those two X chromosomes and now I know I am not über weird for being able to spot colors others can't see. It also explains why super colored spaces give me a headache. I usually call it color overload, as there are simply too many shades of similar colors to process at once. Essentially sensory overload.

[@heroslippy6666]

Hey that is pretty cool, but also sounds like a massive headache. I myself am in the process of trying to get diagnosed for Klinefelters as I have a lot of the symptoms. (Endocrinologist appointment next week, and maybe karyotype test next month depending on the waitlist). My eyesight is fairly normal I think. However, I seem to be decent at differentiating colors. Although that could just be from me having an art hobby similarly to a musician training the ear.

[@davidwillmore]

I'm color blind, but I can see into the near UV and IR. It's a bit of a tradeoff. I can't tell some common colors apart, but I can see things in camo and animals which use colors to blend I to nature.

[@VariantAEC]

I can see well into IR and somewhat into UV. I can also determing when the power is out during the day in another state over 600 miles away well below the horizon line.

[@alanomofo]

Its crazy because there are a large group of hunters who are colorblind.

[@mk_rexx]

@@alanomofo Well most mammals I think are dichromats so that's just a bit more immersive experience

[@rubenkoker1911]

i'm color blind too, but for me it's the ability to find grenade shards on hikes

[@Q_QQ_Q]

I can see UV light, ir . Can see counterfeit currency by eyes .

[@RinSenna]

I have aphakia in my left eye. I can confirm that UV looks very bright, pale blue/violet to me. I can get snow blindness in my left eye within minutes of being the bright sun without protection. The few times that's happened, everything takes on a pink hue for a few days.

[@laurencewinch-furness9450]

Scishow: "Some of you can see invisible colours" H.P. Lovecraft: sweats nervously.

[@horseenthusiast9903]

@laurencewinch-furness9459 mysterious colours unlike any seen on Earth!

[@malavoy1]

Birds also have 4 different cones. They also see into the ultraviolet. In their case, their are oily droplets in the cones that filter out all but the colors those cones respond too, allowing them to distinguish between more shades of color easily.

[@oddlyspecificmath]

Especially raptors, which use UV-reflecting urine trails to hunt rodents in the correct fields

[@wanton_josh]

​@@oddlyspecificmath p0Ejioui reia6

[@Goldenretriever-k8m]

@@oddlyspecificmath wow thats amazing!

[@cogwheel42]

The frequency doubling of infrared to green is also how green laser pointers work. The actual laser diode emits infrared light, but then it's passed through a crystal that absorbs infrared and emits green light. This can be dangerous if the laser pointer gets too hot or cold. In that case, the frequency of the infrared will be shifted such that it no longer interacts with the crystal, and now you have an infrared laser. You can't see the beam but it can still do damage to your eyes.

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

This finally explains why when I've got one of those little tea candles in an aluminum holder that they'll start to glow kind of green around the sides. I knew there was some tie in as the only places I've ever been that was completely black was the inside of the walk in freezer at work if the door is shut. Normally, there are these greens and purples that roughly resemble the shapes of objects in the room.

[@micahphilson]

I thought this would be about Tetrachromacy, but the rest was very interesting too! Monet in particular is super interesting to look into, as you get a good idea of what he could see.

[@chrisheyne]

If you watch the video, it’s also about Tetrachromacy.

[@micahphilson]

@@chrisheyne I thought it was just going to be about that.

[@nobodysbaby5048]

Mmmmm, thought I had read tetrachrome was an exclusively female expressed mutation?

[@MS-pw8yu]

​@@nobodysbaby5048 They stated those with two 'X' chromosomes. So, yes....women only.

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

@@nobodysbaby5048 Yes, the closest equivalent for men would by a form of anomalous trichromat. So, still 3 sets of cones, but just spaced oddly. If you take that and combine it with a normal X chromosome, you potentially get a tetrachromat that can see all those colors.

[@enriquegarcia219]

I would love to see a blindness test for those colors, more over, to have some one who can see them, describing them

[@stentorion3669]

You. Describe blue

[@raistlarn]

It would be impossible to accurately describe it in a way for a person who can't see said color to understand. It would be like describing color to a person who has been blind since birth.

[@nuklearboysymbiote]

Describing colour is impossible

[@SmittenKitten.]

@@stentorion3669 Uh... It's like summer... with a dab of vanilla and honey... or maybe winter with some gravy on it.

[@solsystem1342]

​@@raistlarn A red-yellow sunset sky tastes a cheesy sauce mixed with marinara. There we go I've described one instance of my vision bleeding into my sense of flavor. A sensory experience which you have never had. Proof by counter example that your statement is false. Also, you could run this backwards for a blind person.

[@uforutsigbar5990]

Since I'm an artist, I thought sharp colour vision was something that had to be trained and that's why I have it. (Yes, not everyone would be able to, but I thought I got it through training.) I'm very fascinated by colourblindness and I'm shocked I've never heard of it being connected to hunting (read other comments) and that's so cool wtf. I mean, makes perfect sense too looking at the animal kingdom. It's amazing that we can see the world so differently Edit: As it's for a crowd I should add - No, doesn't make me a better artist, that'd be absurd, especially if the judges can't even see what we're talking about. colourblind people can be great artists too. However, I can't deny it's tempting to start leaving shrimp colour secrets in my work to call out to my people

[@juliavixen176]

I've known of two red-green colorblind painters. Mostly they will sometimes accidentally use green for something rather than brown. Anyway, you're right... color acuity is something that you can learn with training. Everyone (not completely blind) has the potential to learn it. So... the thing about the Mantis Shrimp: they don't mix the sixteen (or so) color channels together... they can see *only* sixteen colors in total. Their visual system connects to their motor system, skipping any kind of processing in between, so that they have incredibly fast reflexes. (They're one of the fastest moving animals on Earth.)

[@amberkat8147]

Hey, I'm not a tetrachomat and I think leaving secret colors in your work for those who are is an AWESOME idea!

[@sagemeline]

I have very good color vision, and can pick out colors in the dark quite well, too. but this certainly doesn't mean i'm a good artist. heck, i've met 5 year olds with better art skills than i possess! like, no exaggeration, either.

[@naturalnashuan]

My Mom is colorblind, I had to sort Dad's socks. It has always interested me. My neighbor is colorblind, he can guess what colors he sees correspond to what regular people call them. He hates it when women are specific about colors, like, "Robin's Egg Blue."

[@joshualieberman2265]

Visual deficits due to aphakia are actually a bit more nuanced than this video goes into detail about. Without a lens you will have blurry vision but only close up. It makes you extremely far sighted. In dogs undergoing cataract surgery sometimes an artificial lens is unable to be placed in the eye and those dogs live normal healthy lives albeit they are extremely farsighted and its hard for them to make things out when they get close to it.

[@spvillano]

Thankfully, aphakia can be treated in humans in many cases as well with an implant. It can be a birth defect, which is occasionally harder to implant in some patients or induced by cataract removal. I've a pair of IOL implants myself, courtesy of aphakia caused by trauma induced cataract removal, one eye having had surgery a few months ago. I had put off surgery in the one eye for the longest, in part when it got bad, due to a certain pandemic, until I literally was blind beyond a foot in one eye. I selected distance vision, making me farsighted, as I enjoy competition marksmanship at distance, so I need reading glasses to read or work on things up close. For those curious, the reading glasses are dime store models at +1.75, as recommended by a professor of ophthalmology.

[@gordol66]

I've often wondered if what I see as "blue" is objectively the same as what others see. Not the wavelength, because that is a constant, but my brain's interpretation of it.

[@nuklearboysymbiote]

Yeah that's a famously impossible question

[@smergthedargon8974]

There's a VSauce vid on that, I believe!

[@le7tfeet]

guess what its not. I have the same thing, confirmed it with the guys at work one day. the same shades of blue will be different, for some reason.

[@EnigmaticLucas]

Color categorization differs by culture and language. For example, to an Italian, light blue and dark blue are entirely different colors, just like red and pink.

[@zachcrawford5]

There are studies the seem to show the your colour "blue" is likely not quite the same as some else's "blue". Some cultures don't have a word for the colour blue. In these cases blue is often lumped in with black,green or white, and when people of these cultures are asked to distinguish between these colours, say by pointing a lone turquoise circle in a group of blue circles, they have a harder time of it. But they may have four completely different words for various hues of red and if ask to distinguish between these hues they will do it faster and more accurately than people who lump those various hues under one word (like "red"). So it is very like people perceive colours somewhat differently than eachother.

[@junebegorra]

Sometimes I wonder about my color vision. Cyan looks so different from blue that it frustrates me when people call it blue. It's like saying that amber is red. There are several distinct colors that everyone just calls "blue" and I can't explain them to people. Maybe it's psycholinguistic and we don't learn them as kids. Another thing is, when I see rainbows, there's a thin strip of light past violet that has no color.

[@brandenjames2408]

Nah that's normal to see cyan and "normal" blue as different. Blue just has a broad definition in english. Wait til you hear that many languages use the same word for blue and green (and cyan) when describing them with their basic vocabulary.

[@Tezcatlipokaa]

In Russian they differentiate “light blue” and “dark blue” just like we do in English with pink and red

[@neosaneo2]

tritanopia perhaps?

[@katherinegarlock2249]

Some people just don't realize that cyan isn't blue, not because they can't see the difference. "Pool Blue" or "Aqua Blue" are more like cyan than actual blue. Also, ROY G BIV is the rainbow to most people, not ROY G CBV.

[@gobblinal]

@@katherinegarlock2249 I combine the IV into just purple (or I suppose violet) because there's no real distinguishing Indigo from Violet.

[@rebeccasaper1379]

I’m a tertachromat and didn’t realize this until around high school. Before this, I’d always confuse people about seemingly seeing two different colors when they just saw one. I remember in middle school finding a similar color blindness test as the clip shown in this video with the three purple circles, taking it with a friend. She got most of them, but I got the hardest, even not really seeing the difference after the answer was revealed; I still had to point out which circle was different. There was a comment at the end of that portion that was something along the lines of “if you actually managed to get this last one without guessing you’re probably a computer” or something. Nah, my eyes just do be weird like that I guess…

[@juliavixen176]

Have you been tested for the mutated Xq28 gene? There are over twenty variations of human color vision, some manifests as colorblindness and some don't (but they shift things a bit).

[@rebeccasaper1379]

@@juliavixen176 No I haven’t. Might be cool to figure out the extent of my condition though

[@everybodyyogastudio212]

@@juliavixen176 trippy. The males in my family are color blind, but for me i saw different purples in the circle on the screen just after 7 minutes

[@juliavixen176]

@@everybodyyogastudio212 Everyone sees those circles as different shades of purple... because they are different. There's a dozen other comments on this video about that. The images in this video are just there to maintain the audience's attention while someone reads the equivalent of a newspaper article. Several of the images in this video are actually just completely wrong, like the eye diagram and the (backwards) rainbow emerging from the prism. Pretend that you are watching a cartoon instead of watching something factual about material reality.

[@spvillano]

Way back during the ice age, I had learned how to fix color televisions. When adjusting the screen voltages for white balance, we learned to have the customer tell us when the line looked white to them. Each person's white can be a bit different and each eye can and does see differently. One of my eyes saw more red tint than the other, which was neat when I learned that. In the army, I'd administer vision tests, including color blindness chart tests, with the full Ishihara test book of 35 plates included. Rare was it that someone could see all 35, I'd get all 35 and noticed in life that I could see blacklights as blindingly bright. They're even brighter now that my natural lenses were removed and uncoated implants installed.

[@battleshiparmorlord]

"Imagine a color you can't even imagine. Now do that 16 more times. That is how a mantis shrimp do. " - Zefrank like 10 years ago

[@DoctorTardis100]

I read that in his voice. Thank you.

[@squireltag1000]

​@@DoctorTardis100 same here, in particular the last line of, 'that is how a mantis shrimp do'

[@gljames24]

It's inaccurate to say the cones correspond to red, green, and blue. The dominant wavelegth of the cones aren't aligned to those colors and should be called long, medium, and short cones. In fact, the long cone actually peaks in intensity around 580nm yellow. Our perception of colors actually derives from the differential between the cone responses which is why we can see magenta at all. If your long cones are activated, but the medium ones aren't, it means the color is red. It's a bit pedantic, but it's vital to understanding how our eyes are different from electronic sensors and displays as their gamut isn't quite one to one with human vision.

[@juliavixen176]

Yes! I've been writing almost this same reply on a bunch of other comments on here! This is also why tetrachromatism manifests as a type of red-green colorblindness.

[@seattlegrrlie]

I was preschool age when I realized I couldn't talk about color to other people. Thought there was something seriously wrong with my television. Confused by photography. It wasn't until mid-twenties when I found out that tetrachromants are a thing and I really do see the world completely different then the rest of you

[@randybugger3006]

Freak! just kidding.

[@VariantAEC]

My parents claim they see colors that I cannot. Both of my parents (one biological male and one biological female). I've had color vision tested and all the cards suggest my color vision is normal not lacking not seeing anything people shouldn't. This isn't true as I can see IR even reflections from IR and UV and radiowaves as well as some other electromagnetic phenomenon. When visiting my grandparents in Southern California in 2019 I noted feeling like I was unable to get my bearings. I could still tell where the ocean was, but not north or south and by extention east or west (even though I know the ocean is west of the coast in most places in the local area). I have tested myself and know that I cannot determine if something is magnetic unless it is an electromagnet. The Earth's magnetic field must be something like an electromagnet which was of course hypothesized several decades ago. Also hypothesized is electrostatic phenomenon happening before earthquakes. Even though I hadn't known what I was seeing, I could've been seeing the build up to the 7.1 magnitude Independence Day Earthquake of 2019... over one day in advance. More bafflingly visiting So-Cal isn't a good idea for me. Every time I've visited there was a "major" earthquake in the area according to the USGS.

[@FelixTheAnimator]

​@@VariantAEC I grew up in the country & used to have as they say "iron boogers". I always knew which way was north, and wandered all over the place without getting lost, but after moving someplace with high tension powerlines all over the place I had to switch to landmarks. Also, I get lost in doctors offices? Never fail to make a wrong turn for some reason. Is it the shielding? (Also I'm autistic.)

[@VariantAEC]

@@FelixTheAnimator Electrostatic forces from the shifting crust during earthquakes can cause spontaneously lightning bolts and diffuse blue glows so intense everyone can see them. Electrostatic interference also doesn't make sense considering I lived in large cities before the largest being Phoenix (The U.S.' 4th largest city by population) and never had that problem. The only difference is that there was an earthquake and of course as we arrived the quaking began and the day we left the earthquakes stopped.

[@Furiends]

@@randybugger3006 Just like the freaks that drink milk as adults! :)

[@tinycatfriend]

i have aphakia! i was born with cataracts, and it was treated before doctors figured out how to put new lenses into infants without their immune systems destroying them. the membrane that the new lens would've been sewn to wasn't preserved since this breakthrough wasn't anticipated, so now i just have very thick glasses! i'm turning 26 this year, and my circumstances are now a relic of the past, which is really cool to me. science keeps moving forward! sadly i have no idea what UV light looks like, because i've always seen like this! i have noticed that i'm exceptionally good at telling different colours apart on tests, so that's something.

[@gavinjenkins899]

It's pretty easy for you to tell what UV colors look like. Just get a UV LED light. Have a friend help you buy one that they say does not have much or any visible light to them (most cheap UV lights have normal purple-y glow to them in visible range, which messes up our test here). Then turn all the lights off at night, and shine it in a room. Whatever colors you see are the UV ones. The ones you usually see but don't now are the non UV ones. Be sure to get a safe light, a lot of UV light sources and lasers are dangerously powerful. Some are made for parties and stuff though. You also want your friend to tell you if they see anything under the UV lamp, because it might fluoresce into visible light. Ignore any object that the friend sees light up, only pay attention to the colors from objects they don't see any difference from but you do. Prisms might also work.

[@wafikiri_]

Mantis have a very advanced nervous system. Not only can they map sixteen-dimensions colours, but also spatially represent their visual images of the world like we do: relative to their body and not to their head like the other insects. A mantis can thus gimble its head and not get dizzy. Correction: As pointed out to me in the Replies section, the sixteen colours visual system corresponds to mantis shrimps, not to mantises. The head-related part, however, does refer to mantises indeed.

[@studioyokai]

Mantises or mantis SHRIMP? because those are two very different things, despite the confusingly similar names (a mantis shrimp is, confusingly, also not technically a shrimp, just vaguely shrimp-shaped) ETA: I bring this up because it's the sea creatures that have "16 to 21" types of cone cells. They also for the record have trifocal pupils... in each eye... that is on a stalk that is movable. They're a predatory carnivore that depending on the species will either stab their prey or smack it with an underwater shock wave strong enough to break aquarium glass, both of which they do with PRECISION. Beware anything with eyes that precise lol.

[@BebbaDubbs]

​@@studioyokai other out of water insects I'm guessing.

[@inrevenant]

​@@studioyokaiat least both of them have compound eyes :)

[@wafikiri_]

@@studioyokai My comment was not on mantis shrimps. If the latter are the bugs that process 16-D colours, my comment is wrong on that part. Not on the remainder. My first language not being English, I missed the "shrimp" word when watching the video. Apologies.

[@wafikiri_]

@@studioyokai Speaking of precision, some of the eyes of wolf spiders have better visual acuity than humans'.

[@eopatcjo]

As a colourblindist myself "Wait there's more colors" is kinda the theme song of my life.

[@cggc9510]

I learned I can see in the near IR and UV by accident. While setting up an experiment for my students that allowed them to see the different wavelengths of color, I went past 780nm and into near IR describing thedeep reds that theyshould see. I didn't notice until it stopped at about 820nm. On the UV side, the purples become very deep and then almost white again. I can see farther into the near IR than into the UV. UV is only about 50nm, after which the purples become white again.

[@Thats_funny_yo]

I wish I could see more colors. I'm not colorblind and I'm grateful for that. I just can't help but imagine what the world truly looks like in the full spectrum

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

TBH, not necessarily that different. But, it depends on which version you'd have. I've got some IR sensitivity, but it comes at the cost of some ability to discriminate greens. But, I'm everybody's best friend in the extreme dark.

[@Thats_funny_yo]

@@SmallSpoonBrigade Sounds like both an incredibly gift and a frustrating curse. 😅 Quite the trade-off for having the ability to see in the dark better than others.

[@Emiko0807]

I lost a lens as a child so I started to perceive colours differently. And I could compare my hurt-eye colour sight with my uninjured-eye one. I've seen the blue light and saw sunsets waaaaay redder than they actually were. They were most beautiful, and I had wished as a child I could photograph or draw them.

[@kiaradoesart9682]

Huh, this is the first I've heard of Tetrachromacy granting more sensitivity to blue! I was told that being a carrier of red/green colour blindness can sometimes result in the red and green sensitive cones in the eyes splitting into 3 groups with distinct sensitivity peaks (at red, green, and the wavelength right in between), essentially granting Tetrachromacy (like in my case, I'm able to see a lot more tones of green apparently). So when you started talking about the X chromosome I was like "oh, I know where this is going", but no! Today I learned!

[@InfiniteAnvil]

I'm a colorblind tetrachromat, the worst kind of tetrachromat. I have two normal blue opsin genes, two normal red opsin genes, and two defective green opsin genes that are defective in slightly different ways. So I can see more tones of green than a "normal" colorblind person, which is still way less than a normal person, lol.

[@victoriaeads6126]

I suspect that I might be a tetrachromat. Blendoku is a LOT of fun. The only issue with knowing about these conditions is that, without a professional test, how are you supposed to know if you see differently than someone else? Types of color kindness might be a little more detectable in everyday situations, but tetrachromacy and vision into the UV or IR spectra are going to be more subtle, especially if you've seen that way from birth

[@juliavixen176]

Tetrachromatism is one of the twenty or so versions of red-green colorblindness. It doesn't really add a new primary color, but takes away the ability to distinguish between red and green, because distinguishing between red and yellow, and yellow and green is a much smaller signal.

[@darkseraph2009]

​@@juliavixen176 Yes, but actually no. People with two X chromosomes can have a mutation that results in them having a fourth cone that reacts in between the long and medium cones. It doesn't add many colors, but it does results in them seeing stronger differences in different shades of yellow. But this means that their children with xy chromosomes can inherit the mutated gene that results in them having only three cones, but one of them is shifted closer towards the other, reducing the amount of color variation between reds and greens.

[@ArabellaFlynn]

Well, I know because the color balance in my eyes is ever so slightly different. If you have two X chromosomes, which one is expressed in any given cell is pretty random. This is why a lot of X-linked conditions are far more disabling for male sufferers than female ones, if males survive to be born at all -- female babies may have enough cells expressing the "functional" X variant to be viable, whereas male babies will have only the dysfunctional X available. For tetrachromats, it's pretty potluck whether any given cone is the normal one or the weird one, and you can have different distributions in either eye. For me, if I close one eye and stare at a blank white background under flat lighting, the view from my right eye is noticeably warmer than from my left. My mother's father is deuteranopic (kept him from being a fighter pilot in WWII!) and I must be a carrier with different distributions of cones in either eye.

[@HenryLoenwind]

With UV and IR it really is hard, but if the 4th cone is in the range of normally visible light (e.g. yellow), it is trivial: Compare the colours of common natural objects with their pictures on monitors and TVs. Those rely on the viewer only having red, green and blue cones and not being able to see the difference between e.g. yellow and red+green. Um, I'm getting old. Just use your phone's camera and compare the live preview with reality. I'm still not used to those things even existing... ;)

[@TheByrd]

​​@@juliavixen176 they explained it in the video

[@prakash_77]

I dig the humour of Rose Bear Don't Walk, she added her touch to even the sponsor segment 😆

[@halwis]

Flowers and bugs evolved together, so many flowers reflect UV light to attract pollinators. I think it's super cool to think that there's an entire layer of color in flowers that we're not seeing.

[@csn583]

Learning about aphakia for the first time here but tetrachromacy is WAY more interesting! Being able to see further into the IR/UV is great and all, like hearing higher or lower pitches. But you still have the same 3 receptors, and the same few distinct, discernable colors. Having another receptor and therefore distinct colors within the same spectrum that are fundamentally impossible to describe to the rest of us is fascinating. 🌈 Must be great for making charts and graphs when there never seems to be enough distinguishable colors to keep everything clear so you have to resort to dashed lines and 🔺 data points. As long as your audience are all tetrachromats as well!

[@juliavixen176]

No, unfortunately tetrachromatism is essentially a form of red-green colorblindness because it makes it more difficult to distinguish between the red and green signals from the retina. All three of these opsin pigments mostly overlap in range for everything between "red" and "green". (Your brain is getting a differential signal from your retina between different cells. It does *NOT* get a raw RGB signal like a computer monitor. (Your brain gets R minus G, G minus B, and B minus R. If you stick a yellow in the middle of R and G, now there will be much less difference.))

[@jpe1]

Lots of marine animals can “see” the polarization of light as well as the usual frequency and intensity. That’s a superpower I would like to have 😉

[@scifisyko]

Believe some people actually CAN see polarization, under very specific circumstances.

[@mwater_moon2865]

1st off, just like ANY sense you can make it more sensitive by training it and 2nd, most humans can see polarized light. If you've ever noticed your computer screen looking more blue in one direction and more yellow in the other, you HAVE seen polarized light (that phenomenon is called "Haidinger’s brushes" look it up!) There are some fun youtube videos can can give you tips on identifying and practicing that skill.

[@MNbenMN]

​​​@@mwater_moon2865 Physics Girl did a video on this back in the day. If you have a white polarized surface ( like a laptop screen or some phones) and tilt your from shoulder to shoulder or rotate the screen, the yellow/blue polarized shifts are easier to notice. I always thought is was because of my glasses before seeing her video, and IIRC, it's due to the blue cones on our retinas being slightly polarized,

[@3800S1]

@@MNbenMN Yep, I can see that. Some monitors are worse than others. I see 2 blue blobs at 90 deg to 2 yellow ones.

[@jpe1]

Wow, I’ve gotten useful and positive replies to my comment, not the negativity and disinformation one usually sees on KZbin. Perhaps SciShow attracts a higher caliber of commenter 😉

[@TillURide420]

When I put these little pieces of paper on my tongue and wait for maybe an hour, I can see all sorts of colors even in pitch black. Sometimes there’s a combination of numbers and letters in the colors I see too. It’s really cool. I don’t know why those pieces of paper make me do that but I think everyone should try to find the same paper and try it. You won’t be disappointed

[@yvessioui2716]

I got involved in such observations in the 80’s and 90’s. I was in a couple with a woman with 3 degrees (agronomy, biology and as a pianist) and she shared with me some unusual experiences she had while with me. Her eyes were anatomically normal. (1) The first, she was able to tell blooming of aspen in the mountain by the change of color of that special little green which I was not able to see. She was able to tell the difference from one side of the mountain to the other by that bloom already on its way or not. (2) She had what I called at the time the perfect eye as we say the absolute ear in music. When we move from one apartment to another, she was always right to allow a place to a furniture only from a brief look at a wall or a nook in the room, or a parking place… (3) She had to develop a way to produce tomatoes from cells in a lab in the hope to clone the best way possible a strain of that fruit. After a few months she got 20 times better performances than an old searcher in that specific field, from a mere 2-4,5% to 95% success. She ask me to help record the steps to her doings because she was missing something… or so she believe because nobody was able to replicate the same kind of success from her records . One step in her new protocol was to ‘bleach’ a diluted mixture of cells for a certain time, then retrieve the cell that were ready for another step. I watched her the entire protocol twice taking notes and then ask questions. I had observed her picking up here and there, cells at what seem a random pattern. She told me she saw the difference, a difference I was not able to fathom. My conclusion at the time was she got pigments a little different in her receptors, different enough to catch wavelengths others were not able to. That was consistent with the aspen phenomenon. She had other sensitive peculiarities that might be a subject for other comments.

[@juliavixen176]

I have expected this with "different shades of green" foliage on trees... It is something that I deliberately learned, and I believe that everyone else can learn to see it too. I don't understand why people don't notice the different colors. (I mean... they're probably just not paying attention.) I can also tell you the color temperature of an incandescent light source too. I've been doing photography for decades and had to pay attention to things like this. It is quite visible, I'm not a mutant, I just pay attention to what I'm seeing.

[@yvessioui2716]

@@juliavixen176 It is true that practicing make us better at a task. It is also true that a correct base upon which we can base practicing makes it possible and bear some expectations. It is also true that we all are mutant and sons and daughters of mutants to whom we add our own personal mutations. Each of us produce and carry mutations by the millions, some more apparent or efficient than others. Each time one of our cells divide, the chance we got a mutation in daughter’s cells is roughly 1 in a million and we have billions of cells. This goes from our conception up to our death. So, we are all mutants to a certain degree.

[@Mozzarella-and-Tomato]

That's so interesting, thanks for sharing!

[@earlaker]

Fascinating! I never knew that the photo receptor cones in our eyes contained molecules that were selective for blue, green or red. My wife and I argue all the time over whether something is green or blue. (She sees blue when they are obviously green to me.) This has to be due to a difference in the number of these molecules each of us own..and we are both right! 😊

[@darkseraph2009]

They don't actually select for blue green and red. They're usually just illustrated that way because it is an easier symbol to use than to figure out something that represents which one activates to long wavelengths, which one to short, etc. The short wavelength one actually reacts most strongly to a deep indigo. The long and medium cones, as they are called, actually peak rather close to each other, but have slightly different response curves. The medium cone peaks within green, while the long cone actually peaks within yellow. But those different response curves mean that any combination of responses always map to a unique color.

[@Furiends]

They are selective for red green blue! But don't forget they overlap AND they are sharp! This goes a long way to explain why colors under florescent lights are so incredibly weird. We don't notice the sharp response in our cone cells under broad spectrum light and without coherence (things like laser light/single colors of light). But if the light source is a set of narrow bands many objects will be dim but saturated and others extremely bright. Two of humans cones are mostly overlapping the M and L cones. Meaning humans have very good color perception between green and red but not so much for blue. BUT rod cells see in blue! and both cones and rods can both be active making us more sensitive to color between blue and green at night. Technically speaking this means all three coned humans can be temporary tertachromats BUT as I described the color ranges would be mutually exclusive unless in a perfect middle ground of luminescence.

[@digitaldritten]

@Earl Aker, Jr I'm guessing that this might actually be because the item is closest to cyan (the color between green and blue) and English doesn't treat cyan as one of the default colors, so most English speakers just call cyan "cool green" or "light blue". it's like trying to argue whether something orange is either "warm red" or "dark yellow"!

[@mattheweburns]

I often noticed that I can see reddish hue. Two lights that are for night vision cameras. Using the camera on a smart phone can make them show up very bright, but I’m not sure if it’s normal for me to see these infrared lights at all, maybe they are out of specifications by just a little bit so that we can see a little of the light on the LEDs meant for infrared, but I see it as a low red glow.

[@patiemi1111]

My entire life i wondered why when i looked thru my left eye everything was a little colder looking and blury than when i looked with my right eye, and it's nice to know why .

[@rhael42]

wait that isn't normal?

[@angeluslupus]

I think you just made me realise something about my own eyes!

[@heartofdawn2341]

I'd love to see a follow up video on the brain's role in vision, and the different types of disorders that can occur there

[@XaviLopez1]

Yes

[@spvillano]

That could become a very long video, as one then has to cover processing and things like dyslexia, which I have and am well compensated with (thanks, Mom!). Much of the processing still isn't very well understood, but then, the brain is much of a black box to science even today. One problem that held things up for generations was considering the brain like a digital computer, which entirely failed, as digital computers are binary - on or off "switches", the brain has multiple neurotransmitters and to add some fun, neuromodulators that alter neuron behavior, giving the brain more logical states per cell than a binary computer chip ever could have.

[@Blueyzachary]

Tetrachromat here (thank you vision therapy and genome testing) It’s not that I can differentiate between colors that are very close, it’s that I can see 2 different colors for something that looks the same to other people. It’s not that I can see the difference between 2 shades of light blue, but that I can tell you there are 2 different colors in the sky-it changes near the edges, and on a RGB display, the whole sky appears the color of the edges of the real sky. It’s hard to explain. In my head, there is light blue and blue as 2 separate colors. (Not just blue that is light. I don’t usually see the light blue alone on displays, but there have been a few times.)

[@herbsandflowers8152]

do you know what light wavelength your forth cone is most sensitive to? because for many it is often a mutation from the green cone so the statement still holds true for them

[@gijbuis]

This picture of the world is what Ed Yong's best seller book refers to as our Umwelt... ("An immense world"). BTW in your description of the mechanism of vision you avoided the thorny issue of how the visual patterns in the cortex of the brain are translated into 'images'. A friend of mine suffered from a brain abscess. When I visited him in hospital he had (temporarily) become blind. But walking down the corridor he was able to move aside to avoid people coming in the opposite direction - even though he could not see or hear them. This is a phenomenon known as 'blind sight'. It suggests to me that consciousness may be related to an overall configuration of our neural brain network rather than to any local area in the brain.

[@chrism3784]

I'm a male and got blessed with really good vision. I'm right at 20/20 and can't see things further or closer then others with 20/20, but I can see a wide range of colors and shades, and in low light. I don't think I'm a tetrachromat but I can pass most color vision tests 100%. In fact I can see so well that my brain can't process everything and I miss a lot of stuff I am not focused on and. I am almost 40 and my vision is still as good as it was when I was 20. Both my parents into their 60s see well and don't wear glasses either neither do any of my aunt's or uncles, grandparents ever. Looking at old family albums, glasses wearers are very rare and usually were someone one of my distant family members married into.

[@juliavixen176]

That all sounds like regular, normal and healthy human vision. Humans are actually really good at seeing color, but most humans don't pay attention to colors and ignore the world around them. The problem isn't with their eyes. (The Xq28 tetrachromatism mutation results in red-green colorblindness, not in enhances color discrimination.)

[@Cellardoor_]

I also have some heightened color perception "abilities". One of my favorite things to do (just for myself as a joke) is ask people what color things are. Generally one color to most people are several colors to me, like, I see a spectrum instead of just a color. Not sure if I'm a tetrachromat but I'm at the very least more perceptive than a lot of people I've encountered.

[@juliavixen176]

Most people just don't pay any attention to anything around them. Their eyes are fine, but they ignore what they see. One of the things that take a lot of time for people to learn when they start painting, drawing, or even photography, is the ability to actually see the colors that are actually right there in front of them... to see the world as it actually is, not how they *think* it is. Like... let's say it's a bright sunny day, in the afternoon, and you're outside, and there's a tree with a cement sidewalk next to it. The tree casts a shadow on the sidewalk... What color is the sidewalk? Answer: It's blue, like the sky... which illuminates it. Most people won't answer "blue" unless they are artists or program ray tracers. Anyway, the colors are there, humans are physically capable of seeing those colors, and ignore the colors completely. Sounds and smells and tastes are like this too. Musicians notice a lot more about sound than other people. Chiefs notice a lot more about smells and flavors than most people do, etc.

[@chrismanuel9768]

In life there's always a trade-off. The downside of more cones is reduced density of the other ones, meaning reduced ability to detect those individual color spectra well. For a small increase, like 4-5 cones it wouldn't be too bad for the other spectra, but beyond that they begin to lose acuity and you lose specificity in color detection.

[@franck3279]

And it’s also the reason why we only see a very small fraction of the spectrum. It’s the frequency range that is almost not blocked by water.

[@The_BrickYT]

Imagine being able to see radio waves: free radio all day any time any where

[@juliavixen176]

The Mantis shrimp doesn't mix the sixteen primary colors together in its visual system... It *only* sees sixteen distinct colors (like a Commodore 64). The whole visual system of the Manis shrimp(s) has been studied in detail. I'm not going Google it right now (but I recommend that you do). From what I remember the cells of their retinas skip a lot of the signal processing that most animals do with their nervous system, and connect directly to their motor nerves to give them *extremely fast* reaction time to things around them.

[@capbarker]

A study in 2010 apparently found that around 12% of women are tetrachromats. That's a lot more than I expected! Although as you mentioned, the mutations in the X chromosome can vary, and some may make a much bigger difference than others.

[@Carewolf]

Most of them are useless. The most common variant is having the green cones of red-green color-blind men. Red-green color blind men, has three color cones, but the green one mostly overlap with the red one, making it mostly useless. In women the same mutation when only carried on one X gene, causes a useless tetrachromacy.

[@mbisson5816]

I have a lens implant in my left eye. I wasn't sure why I could see my neighbor's bug zapper from a distance with my left eye, but not my right eye. I'd suspected the implant was more sensitive to UV, but actually it's because my right eye is normal and still filters out most of the UV.

[@vashcrimson4395]

when i was in middle school i had 20-20 vision. i remember asking about the extra colors. soon after, teachers told my parents i need glasses. don’t see the extra colors anymore.

[@hamiljohn]

Very interesting video, and I always love seeing Rose Bear Don't Walk as the presenter.

[@ariadgaia5932]

OMG!!! I CAN SEE SOME UV!!! I have both my lenses... but when I look at white during the day? It literally hurts! When I see violet flowers? They literally seem to glow! I definitely see more shades of color than most, too~

[@janebeckman3431]

Myself as well. I was having vision problems years ago that were finally traced to seeing into UV. I've also commented on glowy lavender flowers that people then tell me are white.

[@astick5249]

The white thing hurts me too, i think in that case its just that its too bright and reflecting too much light to bare

[@lemonshark4961]

I remember being a kid and describing something bright white slightly glowing blue and the adults around me completely brushing it off!!! I wasn't making it up!!!

[@astick5249]

@@lemonshark4961 oooo thats neat

[@rurutherussian]

That middle circle at 7:07 was clearly different to everyone, right? I’m over here believing I’m a tetrachromat too😂

[@dylant0000]

Looks darker than the others to me

[@CuriosityRocks]

Yep

[@alexwyatt2911]

It was darker to me too. I think they did it on purpose; I wish the video had explained that because it drove me insane.

[@brandongaines1731]

​@Alex Wyatt as a non-tetrachromat, I can confirm that the center circle is indeed only distinguishable from the line on either side to tetrachromats. Sigh.

[@gljames24]

Because we are on the topic of color, I just want more people to know that Cyan is a distinct spectral hue from blue and is not "light blue." It appears "lighter" because of a mix of the fact that Cyan is about where your light sensitive rods peak and most light we has a warmer temperature. This causes hues closer to yellow appear lighter and color closer to Blue at around 450nm appear darker. Also most people picture the color Azure when thinking about blue rather than spectral blue. They will often dub it "dark blue" or "royal blue" despite the fact that this hue isn't actually dark unless it is Navy.

[@VelaiciaCreator]

Historically, blue and black were deemed the same colour, just in terms of darkness. It really is a matter of perception.

[@gljames24]

@@VelaiciaCreator We called orange red until relatively recently. Cyan is the same distance from blue as yellow is from red both in terms of color perception for trichromats and wavelegth as it's about 40 nm between each color. It's a lack of color literacy and standardization.

[@Merennulli]

The mantis shrimp doesn't see more colors, it doesn't blend the wavelength signals like our brains do. Instead, it sees 16 separate wavelength ranges and uses that to discern its environment. So composite colors like purple and brown don't exist for them.

[@naturalnashuan]

When I was a kid I asked my parents if there are colors that only some people can see. Many decades later I have my answer now. Thank you!

[@atomsofstardust]

Kinda interesting that there’re people who can see even beyond the regular visible spectrum, yet here I am with my daltonism (color blindness) can’t even properly see a “regular” amount of colors. Ah, the cruel irony😅

[@masonjohnson4310]

I've heard that Eigengrau, the darkest color humans can seen on its own, is the result of ambient heat producing a constant, minimum glow that your eyes can detect.

[@lunathemadman]

Idk about ambient heat, but I did look into what eigengrau was. I was always curious why I could never see just darkness when the lights were out. I never knew how to describe it, but now I have a term: visual noise. And not only that, but from doing a bit of research and comparing what I experience, I seem to have visual snow syndrome.

[@tktspeed1433]

​@@lunathemadman I have thought I have slight visual snow as well, do pure white surfaces look like they have like random colour static on them?

[@XBrain130]

that seems unlikely, an object needs to be at least at 525 °C (977 °F) to generate any meaningful amount of visible photons

[@HweolRidda]

​@@XBrain130 Exactly. When you see your toaster glowing red, that is how hot a room needs to be before one can see its heat.

[@VariantAEC]

Eigengrau is caused by the inability for the visual cortex to enter complete rest. It's possible the fluid in the eyes (vitrious fluid) does not settle down placing pressure on the cones and rods leading to the brain seeing light but it's definitely not ambient heat. If it were you'd have way more trouble seeing during the day as light fills the eye light that contributes heat to the retinal surface and vitrious fluid as well as being awake and active causes the brain to work harder... heat would be coming from all directions and your eyes would be flooded with light if ambient heat could cause Eigengrau.

[@rpsnider85]

Which is exactly why I always did the sorting of socks in my house. The ex wife would link up a black and very dark blue together and when I'd mention it she'd insist that they were both black. My mom would insist as well but both myself and my son could see the blue and so when we asked him what color both were he said "that one is black and the other is dark blue" before they actually accepted they were different colors. It wasn't an argument or anything just something we found weird. Then again he and I have neatly identical eyes, while both his mom (my ex) and my mom have brown and hazel eyes respectively while he and I have blueish gray eyes that change colors, becoming darker or lighter depending on whatever causes that.

[@webe3228]

I’m so disappointed that I’ll never know what these colors look like.

[@jebeda]

at 5:06 there is discussion of light with a wavelength of 500nm or 1000nm but the speaker says "a frequency of 500 nm" or "a frequency of 1000 nm". Frequency is in Hz (one over time) while wavelengths are in distances.

[@fogogin]

I definitely see colors differently between my eyes, colors in my left eye seem warmer, whereas my right sees cooler. I work in the textile industry, specifically dying and it helps when matching samples.

[@juliavixen176]

I've heard of several people who report this experience. (I can even experience it myself temporarily sometimes.)

[@fnoigy]

I think you're forgetting with Monet is that our lenses yellow over our lives, and while our eyes and brains "white balance" this over time, when you suddenly remove that yellowed lense, the balance is thrown off towards blue/violet.

[@justayoutuber1906]

interesting

[@Beryllahawk]

So color is truly in the eye of the beholder :D Neat fact: some folks don't see quite as far into the ends of the visible spectrum, too. My little sister can tell navy from black, but she can't tell certain other shades of blue apart, and blue LED lights appear, to her, as either white or barely there at all, like a black-light glow. We (that is, me and my brother) tested it, thinking she was having us on: but no, she really could not tell the difference between the white and blue Christmas LEDs we had that year! Meanwhile my mother and I both have better "low light" vision - not really that unusual, but fun for sneaking up on the rest of the family for pranks - Would be interested if this kind of extra or altered range is a thing for auditory input too? I've known folks who had serious trouble hearing low tones (a big issue for a music student!) and others, including myself, who seem to be able to hear just a little bit higher than average, but I've no idea if it's a real effect or just a trick of the mind (and ear).

[@spookiis]

It's neat to see content about tetrachromacy. I'm a tetrachromat, and "white" doesn't really exist for me the way it does everyone else. I can see the colours bend in white light and things like snow are prismatic. :)

[@stephenwilliams163]

Wild. When I want to blow my own mind I think about how there are all these other colors out there that we'll never see and don't have a language to describe. Wild to learn that some people actually can see a sliver of those colors.

[@jakeaurod]

I tried to see infrared once by looking at the IR emitter of a remote control in a pitch black room. Instead of green, it just looked like a faint, grayish disc of light. Maybe it was green, but too dim to differentiate. Or maybe it was reddish but the Purkinje effect made it look more grayish.

[@juliavixen176]

It is possible to see near-infrared, if it's bright enough. I've done it with IR filters and LEDs. Human vision doesn't abruptly cut off at a specific wavelength. Sensitivity exponentially ramps down at the longer wavelengths. So... like... 780nm light is the deepest reddest red color. (Looking at the sun through a shortwave cut-off filter.) High intensity IR LEDs (in the dark) kinda appear to be glowing white, so assuming that they are not blackbody radiators, or have shorter wavelength peaks, maybe it's my rod cells being sensitive, rather than my red cone cells.

[@98Zai]

Yeah, I've seen that too. Like a faint white/purple light. I'm wondering if it's really IR or if the LED emits visible spectrum light as well.

[@vaszgul736]

My whole life, I've been able to see air flow and the wind inside the room I'm in, my breath, everyone else's breath, and how the air acts before and during different weather patterns. I have a condition that effects the nerves in my eyes, (cmtd) but it should be making my vision worse. Not only has my vision not gotten worse, I can still see air and wind. It doesn't really serve a purpose but it's neat.

[@ryanvess6162]

That's called dust. Clean once in a while

[@studioyokai]

Seems like the movement itself is what you're able to catch, which is certainly processed a little differently than say, colors or details on their own are.

[@VariantAEC]

Sounds like you're seeing the effects of light polarization. As light is disrupted by thermal turbulence you might see darker and lighter areas in the air that your brain interprets might interpret as lines, but is really just a jumble of small blobs that look connected. You can see this in most bright light situations or where temperatures vary significantly over short distances. Most people see the end result terminating as a shadow on a surface or see it as heat haze or a mirage over significant distance. Not unusual, just takes a bit of focusing on some of the finer details. Like looking into a pot of water before it starts to boil. If you saw that as color, you'd have listed more impressive phenomenon along with it like being able to see heat rising from surfaces or mixing different temperature air and more. People can't see those things, if they did the air would be opaque. The effect would be blinding like ALVS is to me when electricity bound in the surrounding atmospheric volume is particularly intense. When that happens everything fades blue, yellow, orange or magenta sometimes even indoors. I can wake up with ALVS disengaged and it can suffer from burn out with use throughout a day. With age ALVS has become less of an issue and less of a burden though some phenomenon still cause blinding blue flashes of light that penetrate nearly everything.

[@epirreman]

This makes so much more sense to me now. My left eye has the ultra violet lense and my right eye doesn’t so I can see ultra violet and have always wondered if I was just color blind opposite in both eyes since with my left eye everything has a warm hue and my right is blue hue but my right eye is super blurry far away compared to my left

[@TragoudistrosMPH]

5:14 hearing works like this a little. High frequencies vibrate/resonate faster than one nerve cell can fire, so a pair can alternate firing to capture the high frequency. A rough explanation, but reminds me of that.

[@inrevenant]

1:18 - so annoying when people throw strawberries right into your eyes 😮‍💨

[@bobmcguffin5706]

0:42 "Enrergy"

[@kingbbarry]

I used to think I was crazy doing word search puzzles in the back of my mom's car as a kid and always asking her why the ink print was black-green...or why i have always been happier with the cool colors. Warm light saturates a room for me to the point where I literally think someone has dimmed all of the lights. Also seeing things in very low light situations is very easy, but fml if my wife or kids decide to throw warm light bulbs in a room.

[@tomlewis4205]

😮

[@zach11241]

I can see ultraviolet. And I’m not just aphakia’ing that up!

[@tom4ivo]

6:48 Notice that the red receptor is sensitive to extreme blue light. This is also true for humans, and is the reason we see purple beyond blue light. Higher frequency blue light (aka violet light) is triggering both the blue and red receptors.

[@Windprinc3]

Fascinating! Please note: at timestamp 5:06 - frequency is measured in Hz not nm; that would be wavelength

[@x9x9x9x9x9]

I have garbage vision always have had bad vision. Like 20/400 bad with an astigmatism. Thankfully glasses work. Anyways I guess its time to bust out a prism with friends and see if they can see as much as I can. Maybe I should get a prism and see if my friends and family can see as much of the rainbow as I can. I hope I have this because that would be cool. I don't think I do but there have been small interactions over my life when talking about colors with people that makes me wonder if maybe I do. Like with daylight LED lightbulbs I always see lots of blue in it.

[@litterbox2010]

Huh. Today I learned I am tetrachromat. I always thought I had some kind of colour BLINDNESS, because I could swear things were a different colour to what my friends see ... turns out, I can see MORE colour, not less.

[@kotadawndragon]

When you were talking about the infrared laser, it reminded me of some experiences I've had with light bulbs. If I happen to be looking at a light bulb just as it's turned off (in a dark room), a faint green glow persists for a couple seconds. I wonder if the same thing is happening with the laser.

[@b.a.erlebacher1139]

I see this too, but I've attributed it to the phosphors continuing to glow for a short time after the light hitting them cuts off. This applies to fluorescent and LED light bulbs. With incandescent bulbs you can briefly see a faint reddish colour as the filament cools.

[@franck3279]

Don’t try this with a laser! You risk permanent damage to your eyes.

[@kimberlyperrotis8962]

I think these discoveries of the variations in the ability to see colors might explain the many honest people who have insisted they can see “auras” over the decades. Most of us can’t see these, but perhaps a few really can.

[@mattsingleton283]

Fun video! FYI at ~40 seconds in, the wavelength graphic misspells "Energy" by "Enrergy" on both sides... Might not want to use that graphic again!

[@tammyelizabeth5157]

I am a tetrachomat and love playing the colour tests to see has far I can get into.where you are tested on which one is different. It drives my boyfriend crazy because he is a painter and he gets stuck.often about 12 or 15 sets in while I make it to the end usually.

[@Thinginator]

One thing I wonder, as a tetrochromat, do some cars appear to have different colored body panels to you because of paint matching that looks the same to people with normal vision but is more nuanced outside of that spectrum?

[@jumpander]

If these games are online and on a screen, then you're 99,999% not a tetrachromat. Screens operate on RGB.

[@tammyelizabeth5157]

@@Thinginator So I had repairs done on my car, and YES my hood does NOT match the body of the car even though they say it is an exact match. As well I can see where they did a "swatch" on the body panel to check to see if it matches. It is off.

[@Thinginator]

@@tammyelizabeth5157 Thank you, my curiosity is satisfied. I used to be an autobody student, and I was amazed at how much nuance there actually is in paint. I spent hours comparing paint swatches to cars trying to find exact matches, only for my teacher to say things like "Nah, that white has too much green in it." And the crazy part... he was right, and eventually I was able to notice the subtle color in "white" paint. Color is wild.

[@tgoddard1988]

Is that why I sometimes see a colour differently than other people? I’ve done several colour tests over the years and never had any issues, but occasionally I will see a colour differently to other people.

[@ziomalZparafii]

In today's episode I've learnt 5:04 that the unit of frequency is a meter 🤓

[@Lawfair]

I have never been diagnosed with aphakia, but I've doing spectroscopic analysis in a laboratory setting professionally for 25 years. It made sense for me to go into that field when as an undergrad studying atomic spectra, I was able to detect doublets as far into the UV as 260 nm or a little more than a hundred nm more than normal. Do any diagnosed aphakia patients know the limit of their vision?

[@coledavidson5630]

Mantis shrimp actually suck at telling the difference between colors. They have more receptors, but each receptor is less sensitive or something

[@ryanofottawa]

What's the relationship between primary colours to mix other hues and the colour cones in the eye? Would a tetrachromat experience different colour relationships when mixing colours? Would they have four primary colours and a different set of secondaries etc.?

[@neyok3198]

A tetrochromat is still going to see the same colors everyone else does unless they’re somehow colorblind too. Humans don’t have cones for colors past blue, so anything past that will be some shade of purple.

[@ryanofottawa]

@@neyok3198 but would their experience of how the primary colours mix be any different? Would the colour of their fourth cone act as another primary for the purposes of color mixing? Essentially I'm asking whether primary colours are properties of light or of how our eyes see.

[@burnte]

With the laser tests, it’s the same reason plants look green; the chlorophyll absorbs red straight away, but blue gets absorbed as two reds. Green reflects off.

[@smergthedargon8974]

No, that's... that's not what it was at all.

[@Sweety_Kiwi]

uhh... but the red light with the lowest frequency has the frequency of 400THz, when doubled, its already ultra violet (visible light is 400~790THz)

[@burnte]

@@smergthedargon8974 Yeah, it is. Most green lasers are infrared lasers double pumped to boost the energy of the lased photons. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diode-pumped_solid-state_laser Also look up chlorophyll A and B, which are different mutations of the same protein optimized for redder and bluer light.

[@smergthedargon8974]

​@@burnte I misread your initial comment due to tiredness. My apologies.

[@Kim_Miller]

I remember seeing work on tetrachromat vision quite some time ago and as I recall it occurs in about 25% of females but not in males. The main effect is being able to detect the difference between a whole range of blue/purple colours that men can't see, such as whatever mauve is. Many years ago I was working as a photographer for two different studios and film labs (the old days of film) and both labs said they did not employ men on the printing processors as their colour vision wasn't as good as with women. Perhaps this is why.

[@SpringStarFangirl]

It's at least in part due to men being more prone to a subset of red-green color blindness known as protanopia. The mutation that causes it is on the X chromosome, making it four times more likely to appear in men (I think? It could be more.) In fact, women who are carriers for protanopia are apparently likelier to be tetrachromats.

[@jumpander]

That's such a huge misinformation that I can just say: No. 25% is way too high and generous of a percentage, even if you include all the possible non-functional tetrachromats, who are funcitonally not tetrachromats. The whole blue/purple thing is rather caused by some percentage of male and an even smaller percentage of female humans being color vision deficient. Color vision deficient people can most often not tell blue apart from purple. With tetrachromacy, you could distinguish a true yellow from an equal mixture of red and green, which is also yellow for any neurotypical trichromat. Please read some studies on tetrachromacy and color vision. I recommend "A case study of potential human tetrachromacy" and other similar studies you'll find by googling. Otherwise you'll sadly be spreading misinformation.

[@gerryk101]

When I put on my glasses everything looks chromatic in brilliant most beautiful colors and all that comes out of my mouth is WOW! How do you explain what you see to people that can't see what you see . This is a great video explaining everything.

[@someoneoncesaid6978]

I had to have cataract surgery about a year ago. When doing research for it, I read about the natural lens blocking UV light, and people who had cataract surgery early on being able to see UV light after the natural lens was replaced by a synthetic lens. It caused some people distress because they things then looked different colors than they were used to. So, they started putting UV blockers into the synthetic lenses that they use for cataract surgeries. I don't think it's an option to not have the UV blockers on the lenses at this point, or I might have opted to not have that, just so I'd be able to see in the UV spectrum.

[@lekiscool]

I can. I have hypersensitivities and my eyes are mostly light blue. I honestly think it just makes my “saturation” higher. 😂 Its like a weird electric blue.

[@VariantAEC]

Eye color is supposedly linked to light sensitivity. Less pigmentation more light sensitive. Blue irises suggests limited pigment in the iris and better light sensitivity. This may not be true though as there are limited studies showing its effectiveness. Lighter colored eyes and hair also suggests a greater likelihood of suffering permanent hearing damage sooner, this is very well studied.

[@sirgermaine]

Not ideal to have energy shown as enrergy twice in the table at ~30 seconds

[@therealDannyVasquez]

Is it offensive to say male and female when referring to sex in biology ?

[@roxasparks]

No

[@RichConnerGMN]

no. she said people with two x chromosomes because not everyone with two x chromosomes is female. things like male xx syndrome and klinefelter syndrome exist. sure, females typically have xx chromosomes and people with xx chromosomes are typically female, but not always.

[@roxasparks]

@@RichConnerGMN look up klienfelter syndrome. Actually look into it.

[@therealDannyVasquez]

@@RichConnerGMN That makes sense. Thanks for answering.

[@schnuder]

There’s a 3rd type of cell in the eye that’s photoreceptive in addition to rods and cones, Intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs). These cells use the photoreceptor pigment melanopsin which is not in rods or cones, and are responsible for setting our internal body clock. Most people are familiar with its role due to how artificial light, including from screens on electronics including computers, TVs, and smartphones can cause sleep problems. I’m a bit biased as I work in this area of biomedicine but I think ipRGCs are the unsung heroes of the retina and our visual system.

[@scottwilliams895]

@5:05 Typically "Frequency" is not measured in nanometers (nm). Wavelength is measured in *nm* Frequency is measured in *Hz* Visible light has frequencies ~400 - 800 THz

[@brettmcauliffe475]

I am glad that some other people noticed this too. Good that the time stamp is included.