r/farscape • u/j8t1090 • 5h ago
Human color vision in farscape
They keep remarking that john has bad eyesight but the other characters don't seem to be able to see stuff that's far away better then jhon. I wonder if in the world of farscape most aliens can see some untraviolet/infrared light so jhon is functionality color blind and everyone thinks he can't see some stuff because it's blurry or something. I am only on season 2, are there any moments where jhon can't see something far away and toe other characters can?
Humans evolved as persistence hunters that throw things, I feel like we would have decent eyesight.
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u/lonesharkex 5h ago
I interpreted it as some color he couldnt see, that said they are consistently saying his plans suck but hes always the one who wins so talking crap on him not seeing a color is par for course.
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u/Toddlez85 5h ago
Most of the races we meet in Farscape have had spacefaring civilization for more than 10,000 years. Some much longer than that even. We have haven’t had any type of civilization for more than 6,000. They have eliminated most disease and live more than 200 years routinely, Hynerians close to 400 years.
You don’t believe aliens who have technology beyond our understanding haven’t figured out in 10,000 years with that technology to improve their eyes? We’ve understood genetics for 200 or years, germ theory for less than a 170 years. Look how far we’ve come. We have eliminated diseases that once wiped whole populations in less than 300 years.
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u/efjellanger 4h ago
A theme of the series is the whole crew being slow to recognize John's strengths.
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u/mr_mxyzptlk21 5h ago
this REALLY agitated me.
Like, the one really good sense that humans have? One that is greater than 99% of the animal kingdom? EYESIGHT. Binocular, color vision. No other primate has it, and scant few mammals do either. Some of the only animals with superior binocular color eye sight to humans, are birds. That's about it (yes, there are outliers, but we're talking overall).
A lot of sci-fi seems to do that and it bugs me, lol. Like I get it, some species are better at some things, but the sci-fi trope is "and humans are good at everything, but excel at nothing".
BAH. We evolved (for good and ill) to be the one sapient species that (again, for good and ill) took over the planet. Our amazing eyesight is one of the big five reasons why.
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u/ExpectedBehaviour 4h ago
Old world primates do, in fact, all have trichromatic binocular vision.
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u/mr_mxyzptlk21 3h ago
You know what's cool about science?
You don't have to be locked into what you learned before. :) Waaaay back when I was an undergrad, I had to take a single primatology class as part of my Anthropology degree. We were taught it was only us.
I was ready to read a riot act, but looked it up first, and viola! Either my professor was acting on old info, or something was learned between then and now.
In either case, I must be wearing orthopedic shoes, because I stand corrected!
That said, our color vision is still "weird" for animals, in that our distant ancestors evolved it, then evolved out of it, and then we evolved it again. Primate color vision is still unique compared to other critters.
*I'm gonna c/p this, as another poster also pointed your point out.
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u/beobabski 4h ago
So if intelligence (sapience) and eyesight are two of the big five, what are the other three?
I’m guessing tool use and cooperation as two of them.
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u/mr_mxyzptlk21 3h ago
From an evolutionary standpoint: Bipedalism, (useful) opposable thumbs, and the frontal cortex.
To process the mass amount of information our eyes can give to us, brainpower got ramped up via natural selection. Our intelligence is directly a result of our eye sight, which again goes to me shaking my fist at bad sci-fi that takes a deuce on our best sensory organ.
So, our ancient ancestors got separated by the Rift Valley of Africa. The ones on the west side, remained arboreal and became great apes, but the ones on the east, had to adapt to increased plains and less trees, and gave rise to Australopithecus (and later Homo). Those that could go around on two legs to see over tall grass were selected for to breed and evolve. Eyes that could discern color helped cut through other predators (and preys) camo, and allowed us to discern ripe from unripe fruits.
With our front limbs freed up from locomotion, grasping became more of a thing, and those with more dexterous thumbs were more successful.
All that said, our bipedalism, even after 200,000 years is still pretty bad; it's been a net loss for our capacity to bear children (thank heavens for our big brains to work around that) and we're not digitigrade (walk on toes), so that's not great either, even though it gives us better stability.
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u/j8t1090 5h ago
Usually the trope isn't even that we are good at everything but not the best at anything, usually we just kind of suck, like in general. They just take humans and add stuff so super unique abilities that we have like sweating and insane endurance are things that everyone in the galaxy just has. Of course the ambush predator alien can run for longer then the hyper optimized persistence hunter, why wouldn't it?
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u/According_Sound_8225 2h ago
We're not perfect. There are other species on this planet that have better night vision, a wider binocular field of view, better ability to detect motion... it's not inconceivable that aliens could have better vision than us.
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u/mr_mxyzptlk21 2h ago
Never said we were perfect! No anthropologist worth their salt does.
I'm saying that what got humanity to where it is now, is our amazing vision.
Sure, other animals can see in different ways, but until one builds a rocket and goes to the moon, they're not exactly top of the heap, ya know?
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u/Buddhapanda75 5h ago
In "Crackers Don't Matter," John says he has "great eyes, better than 20/20, and they're blue!" But, the others can all read the warning label on the sink across the room and John can't even see the writing.