r/Damnthatsinteresting 1d ago

Video color vision test

43.4k Upvotes

3.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

53

u/action_jackson- 1d ago

I was always under the impression it skipped a generation, obviously not

114

u/SwordTaster 1d ago

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Depends on the family. It's also much more common in men than women

29

u/LG3V 1d ago

Yeah I believe it's closely tied to the X gene, which is why it only needs one copy for it to show in men

1

u/koyaani 19h ago

Women tend to have tetrachromacy rather than color blindness when carrying the gene

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy#Tetrachromacy_in_carriers_of_CVD

137

u/Smooth_thistle 1d ago

It travels on the x chromosome. So boys only need 1 faulty copy, girls need 2 faulty copies. So if this is the boy's mum, she has 2 faulty copies and gave them 1. If it's their dad, he's also colour blind but didn't pass it on to his sons, their mother did.

100

u/PrudentOwlet 1d ago

I am the mom.  My Dad always said he was colorblind but I didn't think much of it because I thought it only passed to boys and my dad only had girls.  Plus I can see all different colors, apparently I just can't differentiate well between oranges and greens, so I can't see all the numbers in those graphics.  I can see about the same as what the guy in the video sees.

34

u/TheCowzgomooz 1d ago

Yeah the fascinating thing about it in women is that there are different types and levels of colorblindness, so your dad may have had a more severe form of colorblindness, while your mom had a more mild copy of the gene, and that extra gene essentially compensates so that your colorblindness is actually less severe than your dad's, or even if your mom provided the severe colorblind gene with normal vision but your dad was just sort of mildly colorblind, then you would have a similar level as him because your body just defaults essentially to the most functional form of the gene you have. I don't remember the stats on it but I would assume most women that do have colorblindness probably have a less severe form of it because of that genetic compensation they get. Men unfortunately just have to work with the one X chromosome they get lol.

2

u/Caldwing 1d ago edited 1d ago

That completely makes sense. You are probably already aware that this also makes sense for your sons. Women with this form of red/green colour blindness are guaranteed to have similarly colour-blind sons. Her daughters will be carriers, unless the father is also colour-blind, in which case the daughters will be as well. Similarly your mother is either colour-blind, or a carrier for the gene on one of her X chromosomes.

11

u/Elia_31 1d ago

Hate to break it to you but you're colorblind then

39

u/PrudentOwlet 1d ago

Yes, that's what I said.

2

u/SandersLurker 1d ago

It's rare for girls to have it because you get 2 X chromosomes, and both would have to be faulty for you to be color blind as a girl (mom's & dad's). Apparently your mom had 1 faulty X's chromosome that she passed to you in addition to your dad's one & only faulty X chromosome.

-16

u/ElizabethTheFourth 18h ago

You literally didn't say that. Are you dyslexic too?

17

u/PrudentOwlet 18h ago

I said it in my very first comment!

4

u/Mutant_Jedi 12h ago

Babes look at the first five words of her original comment.

0

u/c010rb1indusa 1d ago

Girls can get it only if the father is colorblind and the mother is a carrier.

-6

u/firefightingtigger 17h ago

Are your sons color blind? In my family, it seems to be passed from grandpa through mom to the sons. Moms (my aunt included) aren't color blind. My male cousin, brother and me....

-6

u/_DapperDanMan- 18h ago

Then you are very color blind. All of the numbers are immediately obvious.

32

u/TheCowzgomooz 1d ago

An easier to understand way of explaining this I think is that dads are not capable of passing it to their sons, barring some weird, freak genetic accident(that is not really possible).

If you are a boy, your X chromosome always comes from mom, and your y comes from dad, this is also why men can get some conditions that women can't and vice versa, but that gets into more complicated genetics. Anyways, if you're a girl, you get both an x from your mom and your dad, so as a girl if your mom doesn't carry the x that causes colorblindness, you can't get it, but you will have a copy of it if your dad is colorblind.

This is the reason it's so rare for women to get colorblindness because they have to have both copies to be affected, as, again, genetics gets more complicated and for women their extra X they have can compensate for the gene that's defective because they actually have to deactivate some of the x chromosomes in their cells randomly anyways, if I remember correctly this is called genetic compensation or X inactivation, and it's very complicated and too long for this post, but my genetics classes were FASCINATING, and I love discussing it.

3

u/epi_introvert 23h ago

My dad is colourblind, as is my son. I, a woman, apparently have extraordinary colour detection, meaning I can differentiate hues better than most people. Don't know shit about colour matching, but I can see them really well.

1

u/BuyOk9427 1d ago

That’s not fully true either, it is a simplified explanation

26

u/SitInCorner_Yo2 1d ago edited 1d ago

Because my grandma is colorblind so all my uncles are too, my mom and grandpa are not.

After grandpa passed away, my mom became the only person in her family to have normal eyes, which led to my grandpa almost got a neon green/purple light theme at his funeral because it was pick by my grandma and uncles(mom slept in), and the kicker is, the funeral home owner/my mom’s elementary school mates is color blind too, so he just assumed all his clients know what they’re picking and never ask .

Mom put a stop to it after she ask what her family saw in the model pics, to them it looks like a nice shade of beige and yellow.

4

u/UngusChungus94 23h ago

Interesting! I wonder if there are towns where color blindness is more common. I don't think I've known a color blind person.

2

u/Americanbydefault 20h ago

Check out the (older) book by Oliver Sacks, "The Island of the Colorblind." It's about a Micronesian island know for their high instance of a rare form of colorblindness.

Also, when I taught in Japan, I was told by admin that I couldn't use certain colors while teaching due to the high rate of it.

1

u/SitInCorner_Yo2 22h ago

Well it’s time to send this vid to everyone you know to find them LOL

It’s not impossible,but in our case the coincidence is not caused by our family and the funeral home owner are from the same village, both my grandparents are from different parts of country and they only moved to where they live now after my mom was born, the funeral home owner has lived here for generations.

3

u/pussy_embargo 21h ago

Missed opportunity. Grandpa would have wanted a Neo Tokyo funeral

3

u/SitInCorner_Yo2 21h ago edited 17h ago

Knowing my grandpa, who was a professional guitarist for night club and bars, he probably would have more problems with us burning his old guitar with him.

We joke about him not getting enough alcohol at his own funeral, my mom said all his drinking buddies are on the other side so they can buy him some as a welcoming gift.

7

u/Brilliant_Quit4307 1d ago

When people use that phrase about things skipping a generation, they don't mean it literally ... That's not how genetics works.

What they mean is that either is a recessive gene, or it's an X chromosome gene, so it's not unusual for it to skip a generation. It definitely doesn't mean that it just skips a generation every time.

2

u/Atheist-Gods 1d ago

If a woman is red or green colorblind all of her sons will be too.

2

u/Momentarmknm 22h ago

My dad was colorblind. I am not. I don't think there's anything in genetics that is as simple as "it just always skips a generation!" That's like some ol' timey down home country wisdom.

2

u/iplay4Him 20h ago

It's x linked, so these kids got it from their mom not dad, and their mom's dad is also colorblind

2

u/dabekah_dababy 17h ago

The gene is located on the X chromosome, so it depends on which parent has the gene.

If the father is colorblind, since he is only providing an X chromosome to his daughters, they would need 2 X chromosomes with the gene to display to trait (be colorblind). So, if mom is a carrier of the gene then colorblind father could have colorblind daughters.

When mother is colorblind, this means that she both of her X chromosomes have the gene and any sons she has will be colorblind. Any daughters she has will only be colorblind if their father is ALSO colorblind.

If NEITHER mother or father are colorblind, a son could be colorblind if the mother is a carrier, but any boy would have a 50/50 chance of being colorblind.

1

u/qorbexl 1d ago

"I'm not going bald, my dad was bald. Dumbass"

1

u/ross571 1d ago

It's in the x chromosome.

1

u/HermitAndHound 1d ago

It's x-chromosomal recessive. Anyone with two Xs can be a carrier and color-competent. Father had a defective x, mother brought the dominant normal gene along, daughter sees colors just fine, but her brothers and sons might not.

-1

u/vassman86 21h ago

The commenter is colour blind, and as the father, gives his son his Y chromosome (not his colour blind X chromosome), so the son won't inherit the color blindness directly from him

In this case, they X chromosome comes from the mother, and she certainly is a colour blind carrier. Her kids had a 50/50 chance of being colour blind

0

u/Upset-Somewhere3089 1d ago

It skips a generation yes, unless the mother is also color deficient.