What is colorblindness?

telling me that I'm getting colors wrong. So I took a I took an online test. I did too. How'd you fare normal color? Did you? I? I? I took one of those um oh, what's it called the scope? One anomalous scope. I took one of those online, and I said I had just very weak um color blindness, which I wasn't very surprised by because dark colors are kind of hard for me to differentiate. Sometimes they said that you don't see black or white. You're like Michael Jackson, right,

that's right, man. I've always said that. No one ever listened until now, until I proved it on the on the Internet, and thank out for the Internet. So, um, you want to talk a little history, because believe it or not, there is color blindness history. And I should say also, Chuck, I looked up the more politically correct term for color blindness and there really isn't one. Oh yeah, well that's great. Yeah, so you can feel free to

use color blind in good conscience. Okay, fantastic. So um back in s John Dalton, who came up with atomic theory. He was a pretty important, um early scientist. He presented his first scientific paper and was on color blindness. Did you know that I never heard of the guy? Yeah, so um. He his first It was, from what anybody can can tell, the first scientific paper on color blindness,

and he wrote it about himself. He and his brother were both color blind, and he posited that he had some sort of blue fluid in his eye that was affecting his color vision. And he willed that when he died his ib dissected and when they did, um they found that no, it was pretty normal. There was no blue fluid in there. And later on they preserved his eye tissue and was diagnosed with something called um dudinopia.

So he was a duduran in the parliance of people who are color blind, meaning that he lacked um functioning green cones or medium wave cones in his eye. Interesting, So he was the first, dude, Huh, he was the first one to write a scientific paper on it, at least good for him and bad for him. Well, yeah, I think so too. I don't want to like overstate how bad I feel for people who have color blindness, because I know they're like living life and enjoying it

and everything. But I would not want to be color blind if I had my druthers, you know, no, And I'm sure most people who are color blind would feel the same way. Uh. You know, John Fuller used to work with us. I believe he has some sort of color blindness or maybe calling it color vision deficiency. I saw that is a better term because color blind. A lot of people that don't know anything about it might think, well, if you're color blind, then you see in black and white,

which is a form of color blindness. But that's the most extreme form. There's definitely a gradient, appropriately enough, between full color vision, which is called trichromacy, and complete color blindness. Yeah, let's get into the vision a little bit. Um, have we done one on the eye? Dude? I was like a lot of this sounds kind of familiar, and I looked high and low and could not find anything on

vision on seeing on the eye. Nothing. So I don't know if we did like maybe a video on this once or something, but but it's some of it seemed familiar, but I couldn't find an episode on Alright, So we have a retina in our eye. Uh, like everyone knows the retina. Since this light deals with color and vision, and there are rods and cones. These are they're called rods and cones because of their shape. They look like

cones or rods. So rods help you see in low light, and the cones are what where the detail and the color come from. So the cone mauthfunctioning or not being there at all if you don't have three cones, and you have to have at least two to see in any color. But if one of those cones of the three, if you do have three, is malfunctioning, then you will fall somewhere on the scale of color vision deficiency. Right right, So there's like, um something called so like I said,

if you have normal color vision, you have trichromacy. If you have anomalous trichromacy, it means that one of those cones is not functioning properly, although they all still work there,

it's just out of alignment a little bit. Yeah. And the way that it can get out of alignment is is those cones, each of them has UM a chromos chromophore I think is what it's called, which is like a little molecule that is attuned to a certain type of UM, a certain wavelength of the visible spectrum, and those wavelengths that it picks up kind of overlap depending on the cone. Like red and green cones what they what they pick up on the visible spectrum overlap big time.

Green and blue kind of overlap, and then red and blue overlap least. But if the if the alignment of the wavelength to the visible spectrum within that cone is just a little bit off, you're not going to see colors like other people see colors, but you're still going to see something, right, And that's called anomalous trichromacy. Yeah, And there are well, I mean, there's so many different subcategories. I guess we should go through some of these. UM.

If you have that analomus, uh, trichromacy. Some of the stuff is so hard. You do have your cones, so that means you have three cones, but one of those cones is defective. So if you have the do deuteronomally, it's gonna be a funmany. No, wait, that's a Bible book, right, What is it do to randomally? That's right, it just sounds weird. Yeah, I think I'm really bad with amalies. I think you just nailed it, man. Yeah, but it

was it was clumsy, but that's fine. Do to anomaly, yeah, dou to anomaly, it's it's an anomaly of your duds, that's right. So that do to anomaly you're just talking about. That's if your green cones are out of alignment, all right, and there's pro to anomaly or protnomally, and that's your red cones being out of alignment. And then tried anomaly is blue all right. So if you're missing a cone altogether, that's for malfunctioning. You have three, but one of them

doesn't work quite right. If you're missing one altogether, you have dichromatic vision. Uh. And then we said, of course that the worst is monochromacy. That's that's if that's basically seeing in black and white and sort of shades of gray. But if you are a dichromat or a person with dichromatic vision, maybe that's the PC distinction. It's to not call someone a dichromat. Maybe you think maybe I saw UM depending on your your condition, they're like abbreviated terms

for it. But I saw people being referred to as dichromats all the time. But it really flies in the face of that whole thing of describing people by their condition rather than like a person with dichromacy, you know what I mean. Yeah, Well, within the dichromat though, there are the three different subtypes, which are the du to, the proto, and the trita. That's the easiest way to

say it, right, So that's what those fall under. Yeah, And so the big difference between UM anomalous trichromacy and dichromacy. Dichromacy says it all is. It means you have two functioning cones and because of all that overlap, chuck with all of the wavelengths that the different pigments and your cones catch, that's a huge pellette of colors that are produced in the human brain when we look around. But if you remove one of those cones, there's an enormous

reduction in colors. Supposedly, each cone multiplies the number of colors by a hundred. So if you start out with just one cone, let's say you can see a hundred shades. Just by adding a second cone, you can now see ten thousand different colors, and by adding a third cone, you can now see a million different colors. Right, So if you remove one of those cones, you're suddenly down

to ten thousand colors. That's a significant difference. And that's the thing about dichromacy is it's not that your your cones are misaligned. One of your cones just is not producing at all, and so you're lacking a whole range of colors that that other people with all three functioning cones can see. Right. And like I said earlier, with monochromacy, that's when you see basically in black and white and gray. And there are two types there, rod monochromacy and cone type.

And if you have the Rod type, you also have very poor vision and you're very sensitive to light. Uh In you might also have something called uh nystagmus, which that is when you have they call it dancing eyes. That's when um, there's a horizontal version, which means your your eye basically darts back and forth to the left and to the right constantly. Like prove Taylor Vince does he have that? You'd recognize him? And and like, uh, he's just well known for he's the actor with Oh

I know him. I just never noticed his eye. Oh really yeah, yeah, he Like you can tell the directors like, all right, let's let's really get that going for this scene. Okay, wow. So when you think about the color wheel red, orange, yellow, blue, indigo, green, violet, I said them out of order. I don't know what that would spell. It doesn't spell roy g bib though. But if you're color blind, like everyone wants to know, like, what does it look like if you're color blind? Um?

And it's a little hard to describe because it's very subjective when you think about how each person sees color, because imagine everyone sees things a little bit differently. But if you're color blind, that palette is just not as varied. It's more muted, Yeah for sure, because again those different cones are interacting, they're overlapping to produce a huge palette of colors. It's not like we just see everything in red, green, and blue. There's those those things mixed together and interact

to produce colors beyond those three. So yeah, if you're missing one, you're you're missing a lot more than just green or just red or just blue. Yeah, and things. You know, it doesn't mean it's altogether gone either, because it's on a spectrum, and it depends what kind you have, Like it could be reddish but very muted, or green could look a more green gray. But it's just not that sort of robust standard color wheel that that you're used to seeing with. Uh what what I guess you

would consider normal color vision for sure. And like if you have one of the opius, if you have like proteonopia, which is um, your red cones don't function it all. The reds are brownish, the purples are bluish, Your yellows totally normal. Um. But the green is also kind of like a weird kind of khaki brown itself. And that um that really overlaps with do to in opia too. The big difference between those is that you're um, your red what would look like a dark dark brown too.

A protein ope, uh for doo to and open, it would look kind of like a kind of a drab, brownish olive, which is not what you want to see when you look at like a bright red apple. Yeah, look at that huge olive right, looks delicious And then you take a bite and you're like, that's no olive. So uh, let's take a break, has some olives, and we'll talk about animals and testing for color blindness right

after this. All right, So, I think a lot of people have always uh heard growing up on the playground that animals see in black and white, especially dogs and cats see in black and white. Some animals see in color, some see in black and white. It kind of depends. Um. Dogs and cats they actually do see color, they just don't see the whole roy gb of color spectrum that you and I know. Um apparently apes and monkeys see

the same way we do. Then you have really color blind animals like black and white types like raccoons, seals, whales, uh black and white types, and then birds apparently see

uh seed more color than we do. Yeah, and there's you know, there's other um animals that see things like ultra violet, like there's a visible spectrum, but that's what we humans see where Technically, if you had like some sort of chromophore and an option that work together in a cone to to produce the red, green, or blue, if you had when that was a tuned to gamma raise or X rays or ultra violet or infrared, we would be able to see in those two. But we

don't have that. But other animals are attuned to other things. And yeah, from what I saw, two birds seem to really see colors like nobody's business. Those birds and dogs, I think, tend to see blues and yellows just like us, in a little more robustly. And the other colors on the spectrum are more muted or just don't show up like we see them at all, or more like browns or something like that. So if you get your dog a ball, you want a blue ball or a yellow ball,

that it will be able to spot those a lot easier. Well, it doesn't mean they can't see it. It just means they'll see a grayish ball, right, Yeah, if you get like, uh, yes for sure, but um, who wants to play with the gray ball? Okay, I think it's my point. Uh, I don't always wonder how they test for that stuff in animals. You just ask, yeah, blue right, that's a good Scooby impression. Alright. So testing for this you can go on the internet, of course, and you took one

of the anomalous scope tests. I took what is known as a p I P which is a test called the Ishihara uh plate and pseudo isochromatic plate. So this was a doctor in Japan. He developed this test for the Japanese Army, doctor Ishihara. And if you go to look at it, it looks it's really kind of cool, slightly psychedelic looking. It's a circle composed of a bunch of little colored dots. Back in the day, he would just hold up cards like a ror check test, like

watercolor cards. Yeah, and it's a circle with a bunch of little are dots in the middle, and then within all those dots there is the shape of a number composed of different variations of colors. So there will be like a circle with a bunch of dots that are mainly red and shades of red, and then within that will be like a number four that's really really close

and it depends. Some of them really stand out as obvious and some of them really blend in or camouflaged almost, and you pick out these numbers and say what number you're seeing, and then after you go through this whole series, they'll be able to say, like, you know, you're pretty good on the reds, but you obviously have trouble with

the greens or something like that. Yeah, because depending on what color scheme they use, if you are like a protein ope and can't see reds, you're you're not going to be able to pick out the red three that's embedded within these dots because you can't see red. It's all just going to fade together and just look like a field of dots to you, whereas somebody else who can see heads would just see it clear as day

that there's a three in the middle of that circle. Yeah, it's pretty ingenious test, and that was that was like the test for a while, but it's definitely advanced by leaps and bounds um since then. There's there's more tests

than than just showed up in this articles. One I can't remember the name of it, but it's made of you have four rows of something like twenty or thirty tiles of varying shades across the spectrum and you're supposed to basically put them in order to match a line like a control line, and um, it's kind of like an anomalous gope test, but it's more hands on. And then there's one that the I think the Coast Guard in the Navy and the Air Force use um called

the Falworth Lantern test or sorry, Farnsworth Lantern test. Yeah. My uh, my brother in laws a marine and he's a pilot and he had to take this, so this is an additional test. Basically, if you fail the pit test, then you will use this. The f A also uses it because if you want to be a pilot, um, you can't be color blind, so it's basically a backup. And it's like a little box that shows you colored lights and you have to identify these colored lights as

they come up from a distance. Uh. They'll show two at a time, maybe one at a time, and you just have to pick them out and identify the colors.

But they do dim Uh they use a filter, so like you can't cheat your way through by knowing that something is bright, so it might be yellow, right, because yeah, if you if when you start looking at colored lights and stuff like that, it does become clear that some are just brighter than others, which is why I think people who have yellow blue color blindness or triton opes um, they tend to be very sensitive to bright light jay which kind of makes sense in a in a weird way.

But a lot of this stuff, I was like, wait, how how does that happen? In you know, like due to an opia and protonopia, they overlap so much that they call both of them red red, green color blindness, and they both see reds as browns and they see

greens as browns. But it's just bizarre to meet. And when I really kind of drill into it, the actual details of it are are really fascinating because you you just are raised your whole life to think like, this person can't see red, this person can't see green, this person can't see blue. And it's as simple as that. And it's the exact opposite of as simple as that in reality, because there's there's so much nuance to colors that are produced by these three r GB cones. Yeah,

I mean, I imagine diagnosing a kid. I mean it's not I mean, we'll talk a little bit about living with color blindness in a bit but it's it's and I'd love to hear from people. It's not like it might hamper you. I don't think to the point of danger. I guess maybe if you were a monochromat that might be possible, but it seems like more than an inconvenience than anything else. Right, you'd be like, what is this black liquid pouring out from a major artery in my arm?

I don't know what this is. If it were red, I would know its blood. Yeah. Uh. As far as how it's caused, it is uh, largely genetic, although um, there are some drugs and diseases and conditions it could cause it later in life, but it's generally genetic. Yes, so um. Especially red green color blindness is uh what is it? Sex linked? Recessive? Yeah? And and way more men and way more Caucasian men get it than women. And I'm not quite sure about the Caucasian part. I

couldn't find any explanation for that. But there's a very clear and easy explanation for why more men have it. Something like eight percent of Caucasian men and I think like five percent of Asian men tend to have red green color blindness of some some varying degree, right, and if you have red green color blindness, of people are gonna have mild and the other are going to have it so severe that it would basically be proteonopia. Do do to anopia, which again means your cones are starting

aren't functioning, just like one of your cones isn't. But the reason why there's way more men than women, I think something like point five percent of the population in the US of women have color blindness is because it's carried on the X chromosome. And since it's recessive, men only have a one X chromosome and they have a Y chromosome, which means that they're all of their color

vision genes are just on the X chromosome. And since it's recessive, if that one gene is defective and that you don't have normal color vision, that the man is gonna have color blindness. But for a woman, it takes two defective chromosome genes, right, that's right. So that makes it, uh, sex linked recessive, which is kind of that could be an okay album name. I don't know about a band

name sex linked Recessive, sure, yeah, uh. And I talked about diseases and conditions UM, Glaucoma's one, diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's leukemia, MS, sickle cell alcoholism. If you literally drink yourself color blind like that sounds like something made up. Yeah it does. You know, you wouldn't be able to detect the pink elephant anymore. Yeah, that's true. You say, who is that gray elephant? And they say all elephants are gray? Drinking

yourself color blind? Man? That is that's nuts. That's a tom Wait song. There's also um it should be for sure. There's also like some drugs that can do it too, right. Yeah. I didn't get to look into these as much though, but it says that digitalis and chloroquine, you know, the second ones of malaria treatment and the first one is a reckless heart treatment. Um, but I guess both of

them can cause color blindness. The thing about color blindness, if it's acquired, if it's if it's um genetic, it's probably red green, you're probably a boy and you're probably Caucasian boy, still likeliness, But if it's acquired, it's likelier that um, you're yellow blue color blind? Right, Yeah, and that can actually get better if it's acquired, it can get worse, but it can also go away, depending on say, if you stop using the drug that is causing color blindness,

or maybe you give up drinking. Right, But there's no cure for color blindness genetically, so you can't take a pill or get a shot or get any kind of treatment. Um. There apparently are corrective lenses that they have out there, but UM, I don't know about that. That doesn't sound like a great idea. I'm not sure how effective those are. Supposedly they like kind of work for color, but they also affect like depth perception too, which it's kind of

robbing Peter to pay Paul in that sense. Maybe even worse than that. Interesting and I looked them up there they don't seem to be any further along than when this article was written. But um, there's gene therapy. It just hasn't been tested in humans, but it's been shown to work in monkeys where they inject genetic material directly into the eye and hope for the best. But apparently it works in monkeys. Again, same thing as what you were saying, how do you how do you know do

you test for color blindness and animals? It's I want to know it's fascinating just the idea of it. Sure, hopefully they'll right in. So let's take a break and then we'll come back and talk about living with color blindness. Chuck, how about that? Alright? So, like I said before, uh, and I do want to hear from people that are are color blind. It seems like more of an inconvenience than an actual danger or a threat. Um it does it could limit like maybe what kind of job you

might want to get. Um, Like I said, you can't be color blind if you're a pilot or if you want to be a pilot. Um, it's funny they mentioned in here if you're an electrician, like color coded wires are never really thought about that. But this is probably a pretty good point where I guess if you're may never work for a bomb squad. Oh yeah, that's a good one. That's your life calling. That's sad. Also saw if you're a meat inspector, you probably can't be color blind.

Um looks good to me, right, it's all gray. It's that, it's all good. And the similarly, if you um have a red color blindness, you can't tell whether steaks cooked or not based on color. And uh, Similarly, you if you have a green color blindness, you might have trouble with ripe fruit, whether fruits ripe or not. Luckily, anyone that knows what they're doing with a steak, you could

be blindfolded and cooking steak right. Sure, And plus it, even if you don't know what you're doing, there's meat thermometers that I have to do is get to like one sixty I think, And you're all right, yeah, But I mean we've talked enough about cooking steak in here. It's a it's a time thing, a temperature thing, and at the very least you can touch it and know

what's going on. Sure, if it's if it gives your thumb frost bite, probably not done yet, because if you're cooking a steak by color, that means you're you're cutting into the steak to see if it's done, which is the worst thing you could ever do. It's it's a sin. Yeah, I'm just I'm horrified at that whole notion. I am too choke. What about little kids getting dressed and coloring crayons.

That's why crayons are labeled. But I mean, if they use some names that don't really mean anything to the color. That's not very helpful, you know. But yeah, if you have crayons with the labels peeled off and your color blind, that's not good. Um. I also saw diamond appraisers so interesting, casino dealers, the chip colors um. But now they have things like software that can actually change colors on the web so that you can see them more clearly depending

on what kind of color blindness you have. Interesting, so that I think it used to be like a real problem, and then they came up with a lot of different software that you can buy and just run on your computer. Um, which that's got to help quite a bit. Yeah, that didn't surprise me. I mean I figured in the olden days it was just like, well, sorry for you, But but now there are so many different things that they can do to to help people out with various like

slight conditions like this for sure. And I think a lot of the worries were kind of overblown. Um, Like the f a A used to used to say like you have to have normal color vision to be an f a A employee, and they repeal that because there's so many other ways you can design things other than colors. Um.

And it's still a problem for it. I can tell like with color blindness, UM, the same light will be used on like an electronic thing to show it's fully charged or to show it needs charging, Whereas if you just have a light blink to show that it needs charging, that would help tremendously, rather than just using a green for fully charged in red for needing charging. Doesn't help somebody with color blindness because it just looks like an ugly brown light to them. Um. I never thought about that.

A lot of things blinking right, And I'll bet that's why. Actually, because it's just a better design, not using different colored chalked for emphasis in school, UM, using for graphs rather than like just colors. You can also use like cross hatching or dots or something like that to indicate differences. Um. And then the reason I said why it seems like people are coming around to the idea of it being unsafe to to be color blind in this world, um

being overblown. Japan had a real like um bias against people with color blindness for many, many years. Did you read the article I sent? I didn't see that one man so back in I think n the crown Prince hera Hito was about to marry um a woman, and it turned out that she had color blindness in her family, and one of the one of the royal families stepped up and was like, I don't want marrying this this girl because her family has color blindness in in her lineage.

And the marriage went on anyway, but the publicity involved really got people's attention and they really took it to heart, and for decades up until a few years ago, there was discrimination against people who were colorblind, Like you could not enroll in some high school courses or college courses if you were tested as color blind, and all kids were tested at a young age to see whether they

were color blind or not. Um you couldn't get some jobs, and not even where it was conceivably safe or unsafe. It was just like discrimination against people who are color blind. In some cases, people who were fully blind could enroll in some courses that people who are color blind could not, So there was like no scientific basis to it whatsoever.

It was strictly like this kind of um distaste for color blindness that had been the culture since is finally fading away as as um as time goes on, they stop testing kids in Japan in the last year or two, um, for color blindness, because they're like, we understand it better now and you're not a monster for being color blind. Man, that's amazing, isn't that interesting? Yeah? Yeah, something I should know?

So color blindness? Chucky? Got anything else? Uh? No? Well, actually that one little interesting tidbit that apparently people that are color blind can pick out camouflage better because they look more at texture than in the actual color. Yeah, I saw that they make better spotters for sniper teams. Nice yea, I guess so, um, all right, what about now? You got anything else? Now? Nothing else? So if you want to know more about color blindness, go ask somebody

who's color blind. I'm sure they are gonna have some fascinating stuff for you. And we want to hear from color blind people too, So please let us know what it's like to live as buddy with a color vision deficiency or color blindness, or let us know exactly what we should say. And uh, since I said that, it's time for a listener mate, Alright, I'm gonna call this uh little prices right follow up? Okay, we just released our live game show live in Denver, Colorado, where we

had a lot of our stuff. You should know. Army members traveled in and met each other for the first time. Yeah, that was pretty cool, which is really really neat. We had a backstage hang and uh, you know who you are, folks, So it was it's great to see you as always. We'll be back to Denver because we did two sold out shows there. Yeah, it was. It's a great town. It was really good. All right. So here we go with a little bit about the prices. Right, Hey, guys,

fairly new listeners started in July. Wow, we'll welcome to the show. David um but he's working his way backwards, which is great. So he listened to game shows and he said, I'm a child of the eighties and like Chuck, my sum or in home sick from school days were built around a plethora of awesome daily game shows. When talking about the Price is Right, Chuck mentioned trotting out to the very tough Cliffhanger game. Uh. And this might throw me into the dork category, but I'm obsessed with

getting on the show. I've been to three tapings in the past year, and I've studied tips and tricks. So he's like, uh, what's his face. Oh, man, I was the guy who beat Uh yeah, Michael Larson. Yeah, Michael Larson, except he's the Michael Larson of of Cliffhanger. He said, he claims this is a full proof way to win, so listen up, everybody. Every time he's done it, it's worked.

Here's the trick. For the first item, bid twenty dollars, whatever the actual prices, doesn't matter, Add eleven dollars and make that the bid on the second item. Then whatever the actual prices for that item, add eleven dollars to that. And he said it works every single time. Weird. I wonder why. I don't know. Well, they're probably gonna change you because, as everyone knows, Drew Carey listens to stuff you should know religiously. I'm sure Drew Carey does not

care one bit who wins and who loses. Uncle Iffhanger. I don't know, man. I read this. I think a g Q Vanity Fair article about this guy who was accused of cheating on the prizes, right, and Drew Carey was mad about the idea. Well, sure, if you cheat, I guess that's true. Yeah, that's a big distinction. Uh. And then he says this my other interesting tidbit is regarding the Japanese game show that you discussed to Catchy's Castle.

Starting in two thousand three, Spike TV took old episodes and dubbed them in English, and it totally transformed into one of the funniest things you'd ever watch. If you have twenty minutes to burn, hop on the YouTube and catch an episode. Thanks for the great work that is David Mills. Uh. I have a cousin named David Mills, and I'm assuming that is not you. You never know. Surely he would have just texted me cousin Dave. He's the formal type. He doesn't like to take shortcuts except

the cliffhanger. Well, thanks a lot, cousin Dave. We appreciate that. If you want to get in touch with us to share your tips and secrets for game shows or for getting through life, whatever we want to hear from you, You can hang out with us on socials by going to our website Stuff you Should Know dot com and finding all the links there, or you can send us a good old fashioned email Send it to Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com for more on this

and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com,