Women can see more colours than men: Study

Women have always doubted this, now a new study has confirmed that men have a far higher chance of struggling to tell the difference between hues, as one in 12 of them are colour blind compared to one in 255 women.

Researchers at the Newcastle University also believe that some women may be able to see 99 million more colours than the average human being.

Vision is one of the most complicated of the senses, and how the eyes perceive colour is broken down by ocular cells called cones. Each cone allows you to see around 100 shades.

Most people have three types of cones, and are described as being “trichromatic”, so their total number of combinations is at least 1003, or a million, the Daily Mail reported. Individuals who are colour blind have only two types of cones, making them dichromatic. Most animals are colour blind.
According to the researchers, studies on colour blindness dating back to 1948 found the condition appeared to run in families, but only seemed to affect the men.

They have two normal cones along with a mutant cone that seemed less sensitive to either green or red.

However, women in the family have three cones along with the extra mutant cone. The scientist suggested that these females recognise colour differently, thanks to that fourth cone. It could help explain why colour blindness affects far more men than women, they said. According to study author Dr Gabriele Jordan, there are also “tetrachormats” or people who have four types of cones.

Dr Jordan, who has been searching for such a person for the past 20 years, claimed she has finally found someone with four cones. The individual is known only as cDa29, who is a doctor living in northern England.

Dr Jordan told Discover magazine that the findings had her “jumping up and down.” “We now know tetrachromacy exists. But we don’t know what

allows someone to become functionally tetrachromatic, when most four-coned women aren’t,” she added.