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Chinese Boy Claims To Have Cat-Like Night Vision
Oswald McWeany writes "Reports swirling around the Internet are that a boy in China may have cat-like night vision. The boy with eerie blue-eyes was able to fill out a questionnaire in the dark and his eyes reflect like a cat's when a light is shined on them. No reports yet if he marks his territory or is litter box trained."
Blue eyes? He just uses prescience to find if the answers he's about to write down are correct, much like Paul Muad-Dib the God-Emperor did later in his life. Nothing new here
And there you were complaining about all the toxic waste that cheap manufacturing and lax environment laws in China.
We could have blue-eyed sightseeing children here in the US, but, OH NO, you had to have cheap iPhones!!
From an evolutionary standpoint, I would think such a radical mutation impossible, unless his family has been selectively breeding for night vision for thousands of years.
I suspect instead this is just sensationalism and the boy has moderately better vision in low light, without the reflective light collection mechanisms that exist in other animals.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
He had a surgical shine job.
I still have very good night vision, but as I age it's not as effective as it was when I was a teenager. I have above average visual acuity, which I think is the basis of it. Having blue eyes I can't see as being relevent or even reflecting eyes (hay, anyone ever hear of red eye?) His irises are simply able to dilate enough to let in more of the limited light available and has sensitive Rod cells.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Despite the claims that his eyes have a retroreflective tapetum lucidum, they can't capture it on camera:
http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/2115-china-cat-eyed-boy-night-vision.html
In the footage, Nong's teacher claims the boy's eyes flash when shined with a flashlight in the dark, but the reporters don't seem to be able to catch the effect on camera. When Nong's eyes are illuminated in the dark, they appear normal. James Reynolds, a pediatric ophthalmologist at State University of New York in Buffalo, noted, "A video could capture [eyeshine] easily, just like in nature films of leopards at night."
I can't seem to take a flash photo of my dog without seeing her eyes shine back at me, so I don't see why they can't capture the effect in this boy if it exists.
I think he's just a blue-eyed chinese boy (which is unusual but not unheard of) with exceptionally good low-light vision, but I don't believe he's developed the same low-light vision adaptation that some animals have.
How is there no X-Men reference anywhere in the article or the comments? Are we afraid of copyright lawsuits for uttering the brand? :)
Bow before me, for I am root.
I can't find any references to this before January 2012, although maybe the recent news flare-up has drowned the older stuff out. Here's a Snopes thread on it, nobody's calling it a hoax and these guys know their hoaxes:
http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=78597
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Or a roommate's shoes.
I drank what? -- Socrates
So your stance is that mother cats who have no particular reason to prefer a litter box over the dirt in the yard (and may have never seen a litter box), teach the kittens to use a litter box... even when there is no litter box to teach them with? How do you explain that kittens acquired just after weaning also use a litter box automatically?
Cats instinctively dislike being messy, wet, and waste odors. Just as all cats instinctively pick at food in a delicate and selective manner and in general take almost every action in a careful deliberate way unless panicked. They all have a COMPULSION to chase and stalk that is triggered by certain movement patterns. I don't know that anyone has made a deliberate study of incubating a kitten from birth and keeping it in isolation from other cats into adulthood but it seems unlikely that every cat from the first evolution of cat to modern day has passed on the exact same training in this regard. Nature is a far simpler solution in this regard than nurture and therefore all else being equal is most likely correct.
That said, I do concede that cats definitely do teach one another even when they aren't mother cats. If you succeed in toilet training one cat in the house it will most likely teach the others. The same with using cat doors and other tricks. In some respects despite not being pack animals cats are actually quite social. I haven't seen dogs teaching one another advanced behaviors like this.
I would even concede there are aspects of waste disposal that are likely trained. Burying behavior seems to be in my observation. Some cats bury in a deep and carefully buried hole, others just toss back a couple pawfuls of dirt. Generally these behaviors seem to be common to cats from the same litter but they aren't static. Some cats change behavior in this respect and that may be because they learn from other cats or just that they discover on their own that they prefer the results of a deep careful bury.