Fact of the Day

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - THEY CAN'T SEE RED

Did you know.... If the very idea of bullfights makes you see red, you’re not alone — even though bulls themselves can’t actually see the color. As is the case with other cattle and grazing animals such as sheep and horses, bulls' eyes have two types of color receptor cells (as opposed to the three types that humans have) and are most attuned to yellows, greens, blues, and purples. This condition, a kind of colorblindness known as dichromatism, makes a bullfighter’s muleta (red cape) look yellowish-gray to the animals. 

 

So why are bulls enraged by the sight of matadors waving their muletas? The answer is simple: motion. The muleta isn’t even brought out until the third and final stage of a bullfight. The reason it’s red is a little unsavory — it’s actually because the color masks bloodstains. In 2007, the TV show MythBusters even devoted a segment to the idea that bulls are angered by the color red, finding zero evidence that the charging animals care what color is being waved at them and ample evidence that sudden movements are what really aggravate the poor creatures. 

 

Most colorblind people are men.
One in 12 men are colorblind, while only one in 200 women are. That’s due to the fact that the red-green variant of colorblindness (in which people have trouble telling red, green, and sometimes other shades apart) — which is by far the most common type — is usually passed down via genes located on the X chromosome. Men only have one X chromosome and women have two, and in women, both X chromosomes need to have the relevant genetic issues for them to be born with red-green colorblindness. Blue-yellow colorblindness (confusing blue with green and yellow with red) and complete colorblindness (the inability to see any colors), meanwhile, are passed down via other chromosomes and affect men and women at roughly the same rate.

 

 

Source: Bulls can’t actually see the color red.

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - FACE DISTORTING

Did you know.... You may have grown up testing your nerve in front of the mirror by chanting in the dark to see if any spirits would appear. And while this may not summon ghosts, it turns out it can summon illusions. Staring into a dimly lit mirror for an extended period of time can distort your perception of your own face, making it appear to warp, blur, or even morph into someone — or something — else.

 

This phenomenon, dubbed the “strange-face-in-the-mirror illusion,” was first described in a 2010 study by Italian psychologist Giovanni Caputo. Subjects were placed in a room lit by a 25-watt lamp behind them with a mirror about a foot in front of them. They typically began to perceive the illusion after less than a minute, and after 10 minutes of gazing, many reported eerie changes. 

 

More than 60% of participants saw “huge deformations” to their own faces, while others saw someone else entirely in their reflection, such as an old woman or a child. Almost 20% described seeing animal faces such as a cat, pig, or lion, and almost half experienced distorted perceptions of monstrous beings.

 

The effect may seem frightening, but it isn’t supernatural — it’s neurological. When the brain is deprived of dynamic visual input, it quickly starts to adapt. Think of the optical illusions you’ve likely tried: In the lilac chaser, for example, a ring of lilac dots seems to vanish and a green dot appears in their place. This happens because of a process called the Troxler effect, in which staring at a fixed point can make surrounding details fade. 

 

At the same time, because our brains are wired to search for faces, the experiment can also result in subjects seeing the faces of their own parents or other loved ones staring back.

 

Interestingly, this kind of illusion isn’t limited to mirrors. Caputo found in another study that staring into someone else’s eyes in dim light can trigger similar — or in some cases, even more dramatic — hallucinatory experiences. Many participants saw facial deformities and monsters, but they also reported that colors seemed muted, the volume of surrounding sounds noticeably increased or decreased, time felt stretched, and they felt spacey and dazed.

 

Those tiny specks in your vision are shadows inside your eyes.
The tiny dots that occasionally drift through your vision may seem to be specks of dust in the atmosphere, but those eye floaters, as they’re called, are actually shadows cast on your retina. They’re caused by clumps of collagen fibers floating around inside the gel-like vitreous body between the lens and retina.

 

When light passes through the eye, those tiny clumps block or scatter it slightly, creating the little shapes you see. The clumps also move as your eyes move, darting across your field of vision, and they’re more visible against bright backgrounds such as a clear sky or a white wall.

 

Source: Staring in a dimly lit mirror too long can distort your perception of your face.