[extropy-chat] Looking for examples of naturally evolved X-ray vision?

Alfio Puglisi alfio.puglisi at gmail.com
Tue Jan 17 21:10:39 UTC 2006


On 1/17/06, kevinfreels.com <kevin at kevinfreels.com> wrote:
>
> My first reaction was to say "no". After all, once you leave the visible
> spectrum, light becomes considerable less usefull to the purposes of
> survival.

Good infrared vision (in the body temperature range) would be quite
valuable for both nocturnal predators and prey. Since they don't have
it, my hypothesis is that the tecnological obstacles to build a good
infrared biological camera are too big to be overcome by evolution.
Liquid nitrogen-cooled eyes anyone?

The same could be said about X-rays, with the difference that the
fancy high-energy nature of those rays could be exploited by a number
of side effects on ordinary, yellow-and-green-sensing eyes. The
Wikipedia article names a few.

Alfio



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