Is it visible under water?

2003/07/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Anatomia/Fisiologia

Children from the Moquas tribe of Southeast Asia see it perfectly underwater. A group of Swedish scientists visit there to investigate how they do it.

Human eyes are filled with aqueous liquid, so they refract light like water. Therefore, the correction of the aerial light does not serve to receive the water, so to focus the objects under the water we would have to close the pupils enormously.

This is what the children of the tribe of the Momas do: they close the fists to become a slit of two millimeters and accurately see the shells of seabed, clams, etc. Scientists believe that this ability is genetically transmitted in the tribe from one generation to another.