- NEW!
by 23Skidoo on April 29th, 2009
You do - kinda. Infra red is also called heat - most of us can feel it.
As for seeing it directly with our eyes? Night vision.
But kinda limited - since we have lighting in most areas where people live now and in the wild you'd miss "cold" thinks like trees and the like.
But it would be cool to have :-)
+5
by xprofessor on April 21st, 2009
Night vision -- especially helpful for predators.
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You're reading What would be the benefits to human beings of developing an ability to "see" by infra red light?
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Comments
Thanks for this. I'm looking for what benefit (survival / reproductive advantage) it would be to the human race. I think I can tell if a radiator is on across a room by showing the palm of my hand to it, so it may be possible, I'm just curious as to why we never developed it though evolution (before we had the lighting) - any ideas?
by fred flintstone on April 29th, 2009
Why it never developed? Could be any number of reasons.
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The most obvious, at least to me, is that the first mutations that could end up giving us night vision either never occurred or had negative consequences. I can't think of any critters with true IR vision off the top of my head.
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2nd - we're not nocturnal. So we haven't even got enhanced eyes like cats.
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And purely speculatively, perhaps by encouraging us to huddle together at night, it put positive pressure on the evolution of bigger social skills and hence brains.
by 23Skidoo on April 30th, 2009