STRANGE OR SUPER HUMAN VISION!

Concetta  Antico, an art teacher usually took her children to the park for art classes. While giving demonstration she would tell her pupils about the different colours flashing in the water there. She used to ask them too about the different colours. They all answer, "Yes, Teacher, we are seeing." But it came to the notice after too long a time that the students could never see the colours teacher asked. They simply said they were seeing.

Today she knows that this is a symptom of a condition known as 'tetrachromacy'  This happens due to variation in a gene that influences the development of their retinas. Such people can see colours those are invisible to us. The ordinary small piece of stone what we see as dull gray shall be seen by Antico as yellow, orange, green, blue etc. She said once "I'm kind of shocked when I realise what other people aren't seeing."

Tetrachromats are rare enough, but Antico is particularly remarkable since, as an artist, she is able to give us a rare view into that world. "Her artwork might tap into a structure that all of us can appreciate," says Kimberly Jameson at the University of California, Irvine, who has studied Antico extensively. It is even possible that she might suggest ways for more people to see the same way. The question of whether we all see the same colours has a long history in philosophy and science. In the past, there seemed little reason to expect huge differences. We know that almost everyone has three types of "cone cells" in the retina that each respond to a different bandwidth of light. The colour of an object depends on the particular combination of those signals , but although the exact sensitivity may vary between people, overall one person's colour should roughly match another person's.

We find here that a person see different luminous colours in an object but others see only one colour, that too a dull one. Now let us find facts about visions by various life forms. Whales, Seals and cuttle fish are missing cones in their eyes and therefore, are colour blind. Our pet dogs cannot see red, orange and green. These are appeared like yellow and blue. Colours dogs can see is only yellow, blue and shades of grey. Dogs see a rainbow as dark yellow. Cats can distinguish between blue and green but cannot see the shades of red. From the birds, Owls are colour blind. Most reptiles can see through ultraviolet light. Elephant is like colour blind human. Lions are like cats. Deer cannot see the colour orange, which is why hunting gear is orange.

We find here that different life forms see same thing in different colours, including a very few humans. Here comes a question; what we see are real or illusion. If so it is confined to colour only or shape and size of matter too.

All that we see, hear and experience are Maya (illusion) or are they really exist as we think ?

(Indebted to the report by David Robson in BBC Future in September 2014)

K V George