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Island Tribes Develop Superior Underwater Vision
Artifice_Eternity writes "I found this Washington Post article fascinating. A tribe of skilled divers known as "sea gypsies" have developed a previously unknown physiological adaptation that gives them better vision underwater. Most humans see poorly underwater, because water has a similar refractive index to the fluid inside the eye, making it difficult to focus incoming light. But children of the Moken tribe compensate by shrinking their pupils (the same way photographers reduce a camera's aperture size to increase sharpness). Their underwater visual acuity is more than double that previously thought possible in humans. The article also describes other adaptations discovered in recent years that challenge our understanding of what the human body and brain can do." (Painless non-registration demographic click-through required.)
To me this sounds like learning to play a musical instrument or learning a new skill.
So could we create superhumans by rigorously teaching children all these different tricks instead of genetic engineering?
Bleh!
Professional atheletes develop superior muscles, professional musicians develop superior hearing, and video gamers develop superior hand-eye coordination.
Island tribe members have better underwater vision?
This must explain the increase of those "voted off the island" being hired for full-pool emergency maintenance calls.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Cool the human body can do this. However, using a diving mask gives the best sight.
I am short-sighted, so i put a pair of glasses without the legs in the diving mask.
There is a widely cited paper on the topic of how learning can guide evolution. Abstract here:
How learning can guide evolution
Can anyone find an online version of the full article?
"without the legs in the diving mask."
What sort of biology is this? Do you have to clean dead spiders out of your diving mask before you use it?
I did a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation last month when I saw a piece about this in Science. There's no way that a mere 22% change in dilation can't double your acuity; the pinhole effect isn't *that* strong. So I'd bet that most of the improvement has to come from "accommodation" or some other effect.
I fill it in, and it sends me back to the same page.
I am using mozilla 1.4b, and it happened with previous versions.
I do not have cookies blocked for washingtonpost.com.
Any idea what I need to do to get by this thing?
I think you used the wrong data for your calculation. 22% is only the difference between the underwater dilation of the Sea Gypsies and the normal European minimum. But the article also mentions that most people's pupils dilate when they go underwater, so other people's eyes aren't anywhere near their minimum. The difference is much larger than 22%. Besides, they aren't acheiving perfect focus, only better focus.
A 2mm pinhole seems big, but it is enough to make a significant difference in acuity. I'm pretty blind without my glasses, but I can significantly improve my resolution by making a crude pinhole lens by circling my index finger to a near pinhole of a few millimeters. Try it, if you wear glasses. It's surprising how well it works, especially considering how large the aperture is, and how far it is from circular. Looking through my imaginary monocle also makes me look extra strange.
I wonder if this explains some of the believers in the Bates Method of vision improvement. They believe that you can learn to see better without your glasses, although Bates' original model of the eye is mechanically wrong. Perhaps they aren't completely wrong. They also recommend gazing at the sun as sunbathing for the eyes. That could initiate the dilation. Unfortunately, UV exposure also causes cataracts.
I'm curious as to whether this phenomenon appears anywhere else. It seems to me that families of pearl divers or people who dive for food in other parts of the world should display this too. If not, I'd wonder why.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
It does strike me that the article initially tries to persuade one that this is a genetic trait, and then sneaks in the possiblity of a learned behavior. I think that this is a little cheap.
And that is why when the post asks me who I am, I am a 57 year old man from Washington DC. 20002 is my favorite made up zipcode.
This idea, with obvious commercial applications, and clearly not in use anywhere else, should be patented by the Moken tribe. Otherwise, some industrialized country will patent it and sell it to the grandchildren of the current Moken. The U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity supports the idea that indigenous people should be able to patent their discoveries. Go for it!
Cool, thanks! This really works. I took off my glasses (I'm near-sighted), and moved my head so I could read your post. I was about 4 inches from the monitor.
Then I tried your index-finger trick, and moved back until I could just barely read the text. I was almost 2 feet away before I couldn't read it any more!
Then I tried it squinting, and I was only about 10 inches away from the monitor when I stopped being able to read it. So your finger trick is more than twice as effective as squinting!
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
I'm pretty blind without my glasses, but I can significantly improve my resolution by making a crude pinhole lens by circling my index finger to a near pinhole of a few millimeters.
Glad to know I'm not the only person walking around with their hand in front of their eye. I use a three-finger approach. I touch my middle finger with my thumb (kind of like an "OK" gesture, but with the middle finger instead of the index finger). In between the thumb and middle finger is where I put my index finger. As a child, I learned that I got fewer strange looks using this method.
I just thought it was a whack turn of phrase. So I was sitting there trying to think of an animal that would fit the phrase "flexible like a [X]" and nothing really came to mind. And then I started wondering how flexible salamanders really are. And is this a property that one could quantitate? And then I remembered that I was at work and that we have all these measuring devices
And at the end of it all, I decided that this series of thoughts was completely off topic.
without the legs in the diving mask? How on earth did you get your legs in the mask in the first place? I would have thought that it would make very little difference if you wore glasses or not if you had your legs in the mask as you'd be hard pressed to see past them. Also, how did you get your legs up to your face and swim at the same time? There are safety issues here - I think you should go to a registered diving school before trying anything like this again!