I only recently found out that most new world monkeys are colorblind. To be slightly more precise in most species a good deal of females and all males are colorblind. You could do a lot of speculating on why that is. The author does, in fact, speculate that for these monkeys the lack of color vision is an adaptation that keeps them from being distracted by color.
Possible. Makes you wonder why this factor wasn't in play in Africa, with the adaptation only happening after the rafting. What was the big difference?
2 comments:
Well, that's news to me too. It's definitely a mystery considering that African primates all see color, I figured it was a common trait in all. I'd find being color blind very boring but apparently that's not always true.
Then there's there's the other innate talent of people who have enhanced sensitivity to color - tetrachromacy. There was a link to a BBC article in the Conversation piece. It's a fact I've always enjoyed seeing in color and knowing the normal human eye can see many shades, but being a tetrachromat looks like nightmare vision to me. One woman said that going to a grocery store was hard for her because it was like a trash pile of color coming at her. Oddly enough the most comfortable shade for her is white because it's restful.
I think early humans rafted to the Americas as well, but not so long ago as primates 30 million years ago (likely on a raft that had bananas). The idea of archeology is appealing but I've imagined finding dinosaurs or discovering the ruins of an ancient race - looking for monkey teeth doesn't quite fit the bill.
I wouldn't want to be colorblind as, having had color vision all my life, it would be boring as you say. Those who are colorblind all their lives might not be bothered as much, depending. I guess with entire species that don't see (as much) color they have nothing to compare it to.
Tetrachromacy generally means seeing the colors we do plus ultraviolet. Some sharks have it. A lot of birds do. Natural selection seems to select for it when you're otherwise working under conditions of poor visibility, i.e. underwater or high off the ground far from the things you're looking for. As humans our world is already filled with color and detail so tetrachromacy is overload when we have it. Monet did after an accident and made it work for him but it must have felt weird.
The peopling of the Americas is still a mysterious process. The Inuit people are known to have arrived later than Amerindians, so there may have been multiple waves before that as well. With archeology, as well as a few other fields, we like to fantasize about making the discovery that will change everything. Most finds just keep the conversation going and that's fine.
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