Chinese kid can see clearly in the dark

[Konstantin]

Look at this eyes. Its a little scary

https://www.sott.net/articles/show/240651-Chinese-Boy-Can-See-In-The-Dark

 

[bngenoh]

Very interesting find jovichmk,

All these interesting abilities popping up everywhere in the world could be sign of genes being expressed, ie mutations. The boy in Brazil with the magnetic body comes to mind, and the increasing amount of people with synesthesia (hope i spelt that right) as reported in one of sott's featured articles comes to mind.

Didn't see the blue green reflection of his eyes though, his eyes were a wonderful crystalline baby blue.

Interesting times indeed.

 

[Nienna]

Very interesting find jovichmk,

All these interesting abilities popping up everywhere in the world could be sign of genes being expressed, ie mutations. The boy in Brazil with the magnetic body comes to mind, and the increasing amount of people with synesthesia (hope i spelt that right) as reported in one of sott's featured articles comes to mind.

Didn't see the blue green reflection of his eyes though, his eyes were a wonderful crystalline baby blue.

Interesting times indeed.

At the very end of the video, his eyes had a luminescence about them. Not saying it was blue-green, but there was a reflection in them. At least that's what I saw.

 

[bngenoh]

At the very end of the video, his eyes had a luminescence about them. Not saying it was blue-green, but there was a reflection in them. At least that's what I saw.

Yeah, but i was expecting the kind of strong reflection one sees in cat eyes when you shine light on them, perhaps it just wasn't dark enough.

 

[Yozilla]

This reminds me of Michelangelo's creepy painting of a girl with strange eyes ... there was a particular thread about it on this forum ..... I dunno if this is pointing anywhere ....

 

[Konstantin]

Here is some news about this boy:

_http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/01/31/does-chinas-cat-eyed-boy-have-natural-night-vision/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxnews%2Faffiliates%2Fktla+%28Affiliate+-+West+-+Los+Angeles+-+CA%29

*mods note* deactivated link to foxnews ;)

 

[bngenoh]

According to a news reel from China, a young boy there possesses the ability to see in the dark. Like a Siamese cat's, his sky-blue eyes flash neon green when illuminated by a flashlight, and his night vision is good enough to enable him to fill out questionnaires while sitting in a pitch black room — or so say the reporters who visited Nong Yousui in his hometown of Dahua three years ago.

The footage of Nong and his strange-looking eyes originally surfaced in 2009; it got little attention at the time, but is now making a splash all over the Web. If the boy really does have a genetic mutation that confers night vision, then he would be an interesting subject for analysis by vision scientists, evolutionary biologists, and genetic engineers alike — but does he?

[...]

Night vision is made possible by a layer of cells, called the tapetum lucidum, in the eyes of cats and other nocturnal animals. This thin layer is a "retroreflector" — when a beam of light hits it, it reflects the light directly back along its incoming path. The reflected beam constructively interferes with the incoming light beam, amplifying the overall signal that hits the retina and enabling the animal to see in very low-light conditions. Retroreflection also causes cat eyes to flash when they are lit upon at night, and experts say Nong's eyes, if they are truly catlike, should do the same.

"It would be easy to test the boy’s eyes for retroreflection (eyeshine), which would be indicative of a tapetum lucidum," said Nathaniel Greene, a physicist at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania who has studied retroreflection.

In fact, such a test is run in the video.

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."

This is what i was talking about, it wasn't really as strong a reflection as feline eyes, but that could be due to it not being dark enough.

Furthermore, there is no single genetic mutation that could produce a fully formed and functioning tapetum lucidum, Reynolds explained; such an ability would require multiple mutations, which don't just happen all at once. Evolution happens incrementally, he said, not by leaps and bounds. "Evolutionarily, mutations can result in differences that allow for new environmental niche exploitation. But such mutations are modified over long periods. A functional tapetum in a human would be just as absurd as a human born with wings. It can't happen," he told Life's Little Mysteries.

He says it with such authority doesn't he, it made me chuckle, and reminded me of Aurthur C. Clarke's first law "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

Because there is accumulating evidence that evolution does happen by "leaps and bounds."

Source: http://www.livescience.com/18209-china-cat-eyed-boy-night-vision.html