Photo: Yangtse
There was a sight to be seen at a bridge in Taizhou, Jiangsu Province, China a couple of days ago: the migration of thousands of toads!
Thousands of toads were spotted at a bridge in Taizhou, Jiangsu province, China, on May 9. According to local expert, the toads were enduring a mass migration because of the depleting oxygen resource in a nearby river.
From the pic it seems like the chance of survival for the toads are not looking good on the road too…
Link - Thanks Jee!
Comments (22)
HOT. This Pic is AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
On another note, women cannot be color-blind and men cannot have super-color vision like some women. Whereas men will be color blind because they lack a third cone responding to the red range, women can have a fourth cone that bisects the red range and gives a richer spectrum of colors. Then there is achromatopsia which is the inability to see color and a really bad name for a baby girl.
Perhaps some of the difference is in the color-opponency cells in the occipital cortex and perhaps the associating of different colors. A part of me suspects women are trained by the culture to recognize a greater range of color names and men are basically not expected to. Wine-tasters also have a wider range of names for flavors, using terms like "earthy" that non-wine-tasters by and large don't use. I doubt the wide range of color names employed by women are innate. But like the wine-tasters, they learn to discriminate.
Even given all that, which is done to be fair, I think there might actually be some innate predilection, but devising a conclusive experiment for that is problematic.
@ Ryan S, women can also have colour blindness but it is quite uncommon. Colour blindness is carried on the X chromosome. If males inherit an X chromosome with the mutation it will be displayed in the phenotype. If women inherit 1, she will be a carrier, however if she inherits the mutation from both X chromosomes, it will be displayed in the phenotype.
Also, you have a point about gender differences in the vocabulary of colour:
"Stecklers' study in 1990 concluded that women's ability of naming colors is far more precise than men's and also they have a broader vocabulary for color names such as ecru, aquamarine, lavender, and mauve."
http://www.colormatters.com/news_spring_07/focus.html
You are right, my mistake, color-blindness is a recessive allele on the X chromosome