Did we lose our ability to see in infrared light ? Or we never had it to begin with ? Does DNA mutations has to do something with it because some have blue eyes instead of brown and they say this is because DNA mutation happened only once in Europe somewhere.

Question

Those animals who hunt in night need vision in infrared light. So, were they first night hunters and then developed vision in infrared (due to mutation in DNA ?) and stayed with them forever according to Darwin’s theory (survival of the fittest) or they realized they had infrared vision and so why not hunt in night only ?

In: Biology

Answer 1

>Those animals who hunt in night need vision in infrared light

No they don’t. Night vision and thermal imagining are 2 completely separate things. Seeing infrared is literally having the ability to detect infrared wavelengths of light. Night vision is just having eyes that are super sensitive even in low light conditions, but it’s still visible light. Some animals can sense infrared but they don’t really “see” it with their eyes, and no mammal is capable of seeing infrared because we make our own body heat, which would render that ability useless. So no, humans never had the ability to see infrared, nor did our evolutionary ancestors, or any other mammal for that matter. Also, the color of our eyes has nothing to do with our vision. That’s literally just pigment, the same pigment that gives us our skin color.