Everybody knows that. Women see colors where men don’t : for us, plum is a fruit, not a color.
Deformity? Really?
Tetrachromats are at one end of a continuum of mammalian vision.
Because most humans are trichromats, that is considered “normal.” Dichromats and monochromats are called “color blind” when they are humans, but would be completely typical as members of other mammalian species.
To call tetrachromacy a “deformity” is about the same as saying that Usain Bolt is a cripple.
Must be a living hell to shop with her, and double the hell to shop FOR her. And I don’t even touch the issues of anything that involves painting. Regular trichromat females are difficult enough to warrant existence of a book about color-matching difficulties, e.g. “Fifty Shades of Yellow”.
That said, must also be a good asset in forensics, arts, military IMINT, and other related fields where high-end color vision is at premium.
Oof. That painting… Maybe she is seeing more colors, but that doesn’t mean she has good color sense… Any more than that a person being able to read makes them able to write literature…
(article pairing coincidence?)
It is factually correct that, on average, women have superior color vision compared to men, if only because the incidence of various forms of color blindness is far higher in men. Yay for the ladies having two X chromosomes!
But to drag stereotypical notions into the discussion that women are hard to shop for, or that shopping with them is especially miserable for men, is to cross from acknowledging an actual sex linked difference into blatant sexism.
Tried that? The colors are never matching well enough, the combinations aren’t “proper”, the shades aren’t right. A yellow is a yellow is a yellow, what’s so complex with it?
Mantis shrimp is not impressed. Also, she’s not a bad artist, but I wonder if there are aspects of her painting that are apparent only to fellow tetrachromatics, which if the article’s speculation of 1% of the population is correct, would encompass 70 million people worldwide.
Yeah, I was just thinking that if elephants and cats can be taught to paint, surely the right kind of canvas could let us see the world the way the mantis shrimp does!
I think the point is that, if she is truly a tetrachromatc, her color sense is completely different from yours. Much the same way that people who are colorblind have a completely different sense of color. To her, you are color blind. Compare the images below - as the first image is to you, and the second image is to someone who is dichromatic, so is her vision to yours.
normal:
deuteroanopia:
And the obligatory color test: http://www.xrite.com/online-color-test-challenge
I scored 2.
Oh come on. Just look at her eyes. Four chormatophores! Its hideous.
My eyes hurt! I scored 19. I think I’m blind.
More about seeing color and tetrachromatics in this fascinating Radiolab podcast:
My daughter was telling me that she learned about tetrachromatics from a teacher who gave a test that involved some kind of color perception (some kind of biology quiz) and he would find consistently that one or two kids would miss the same question year after year, so he investigated and learned that these kids were likely tetrachromatics.
Got 18, had to make a lot of grunting noises.
Neat test, though I found the controls kind of fiddly. I scored a 4.
Every time I think of this woman I just feel so impossibly inferior and jealous.
I… scored 0. I was expecting to be pretty bad, so that was something of a surprise. My acuity is still rubbish, though, plus I’m really myopic, so I’ve got that not going for me.
Oops, posted the wrong Radiolab:
But that other one is awesome too so leaving that one.
