[HN Gopher] Brittle starfish are second known example of vision ...
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Brittle starfish are second known example of vision in an organism
without eyes
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 49 points
Date : 2020-01-05 17:25 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cell.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cell.com)
| hamburga wrote:
| Couldn't you say that any plant that orients itself towards the
| sun (e.g. sunflower) can detect light without eyes?
| jpeanuts wrote:
| Indeed, it seems like a pretty subtle distinction. Given
| sufficiently bright light, sunflowers would certainly pass the
| behavioral experiment done here (which is very nicely
| summarized in Figure 1 of the paper).
|
| The distinction must be in the ability of these starfish to
| resolve objects (with an angular resolution between 30-50
| degrees apparently).
| BurningFrog wrote:
| You could argue photosynthesis is a crude form of vision.
| userbinator wrote:
| I suppose it depends on what you consider "eyes" -- these
| starfish could be said to have many effectively single-pixel
| "eyes" instead of two high-resolution ones.
| evanriley wrote:
| I have a (fairly stupid) question after reading this...
|
| Is the human brain hard-coded for vision through eyes or is it
| possible to a (at least similar) form of vision without eyes, or
| like a much less exaggerated form of sonar like Daredevil, is the
| human brain REALLY that adaptable?
|
| In an attempt to restore vision to those that lost it, is their a
| way to mentally rehab someone to "see" in a different way?
| rusanu wrote:
| Very much so. Besides adaptation like Human Echolocation
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation), there is
| also active research for devices to help. Look at
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_substitution#Tactile%E...
| for example, and there are videos of the various devices in use
| by blind people, eg.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s1VAVcM8s8
| danwills wrote:
| I read about a blind guy who had a camera hooked up to an array
| of electrodes on his back and eventually was able to 'see'
| using it. That was a long time ago, but it looks like it's
| still a thing nowadays, see 'Brainport' [1] and 'Visual
| Prosthesis' [2] (aka 'bionic eye'). It's amazing how plastic
| brains and nervous systems seem to be!
|
| [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/device-lets-
| blind...
|
| [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_prosthesis
| snek wrote:
| People who cannot see often turn to echolocation:
| https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/10/echolocation-blind-p...
| bookofjoe wrote:
| >Only one species of sea urchin has 'passed' the same tests for
| vision, and it also, independently, changes color in response to
| light levels. Future work will probe whether this sea urchin, the
| only other animal in the world known to see without eyes, might
| be using a similar trick to Ophiocoma.
|
| Source: https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-just-showed-that-
| color-c...
| JTon wrote:
| The term they use to describe this phenomena is "extraocular
| vision". Defined as the ability to see without eyes.
|
| More info: https://aspirantworld.in/extraocular-vision/
| pmontra wrote:
| This should be tagged as PDF.
| userbinator wrote:
| Although HN can't really do anything about it, it's also worth
| noting the PDF linked is named "mmc3.pdf", which greatly
| confused me for a moment because I happened to also have the
| MMC-3 spec[1] opened in my PDF reader, and it's also roughly
| the same size.
|
| [1] http://www.13thmonkey.org/documentation/SCSI/mmc3r10g.pdf
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