Why can women distinguish more lipstick numbers?

Different people have innate differences in perception of color, especially since both the red and green color vision genes are on the X chromosome (the other gene that controls blue vision is on chromosome 7), and sex may become a major factor affecting color vision.

First of all, we need to recall that if a title is a color, such as blue and green, orange and yellow, lemon and grass green, and even carnation and salmon color – then the division of colors becomes quite subjective, and different people always have different opinions.

But the one that had the greatest impact on our opinion was the dyeing process. For example, the stable nature of blue substances in nature is very rare, most ancient languages lack of words specifically express "blue", ancient Greeks used to call blue "kyaneos" can also refer to dark green, purple, or even black or brown, when they say to color the eyes of the statue, it may refer to any of the colors; "Xunzi Persuasion" there is a sentence "blue out of blue is better than blue", of which "blue" refers to "indigo blue", the kind of herbaceous plant used to refine blue, "green" is the name of color From darker green to black, it can be generalized.

When synthetic dyes appeared in the 19th century, we could reconcile almost any color we wanted, and the title of color instantly surged dozens of times. But on the other hand, such color titles cannot be increased indefinitely, because the naked eye cannot infinitely accurately distinguish the visible spectrum.

For the average trichromatic visionary, we can distinguish about 12 million colors. Therefore, today's monitors generally use 24 bits to represent 1 pixel, that is, 8 bits for each primary color, so that 16777216 colors can be combined, which is enough to fool the vast majority of human eyes.

But this number does not exclude huge individual differences, for monochromatic and monochromatic weak patients, one of their cone cells can not work, which degenerates into a two-color vision, can only distinguish more than 10,000 colors; the loss of two kinds of cone cells of panchromia patients will degenerate into monochromatic vision, can only see about 100 kinds of deep and light gray; and the loss of all cone cells of panchromatic blind patients will even normal vision will be impaired, because the rod cells are too sensitive to light, the whole world in their eyes like bleaching.

As mentioned earlier, the genes associated with reddish-green vision are on the X chromosome, so most people with color vision problems are male, and the proportion is about 8%, compared with only 0.5% of women. This is because Y staining is not compensated by the corresponding functional alleles on the relevant gene site; and women with two X chromosomes at the same time have a great chance to compensate with another normal chromosome, so as to obtain normal color vision perception.

However, the way nature works is always bizarre, and this case of color vision degradation may instead bring some talented color vision enhancement: the most famous contemporary case is the Australian female painter Concetta Antico, whose father was red-blind, and the original red consciousness became yellow consciousness, and this gene was inherited by Conceta, so she had a yellow consciousness in addition to having a normal blue, green, and red consciousness. This is also known as tetrachromacy.

As a result, she can distinguish more than 100 million colors, especially yellow-orange and pink, which are very dull in the average person. In her opinion, some unusually vivid colors may not be different for ordinary people at all.

In fact, as early as 1948, dutch scientist Heisel de Fries had already discovered the first similar example. Also because the father is red-green blind, the daughter inherited this mutated color vision gene and became a four-color visionist who can be more sensitive to the colors between red and green.

According to this situation analysis, female relatives of male red-green blindness may become four-color vision if they have their color vision mutation genes and just retain two sets of color vision at the same time. Taking into account random factors such as the proportion of men with red-green blindness and the number of female relatives, it has been speculated that 12% of women may have tetrachromatic or quasi-tetrachromatic vision.

However, in reality, because one of the female X chromosomes is inactive, it is obvious that it takes a lot of luck to make all four color visions appear dominant, so the real proportion may not be so high.

From a broader perspective, the differences in color vision between genders are not exclusive to humans. New World monkeys are also known as broad-nosed small eyes, of which except for the howler monkey, which is a serious tricolor vision, most of the others are two-color vision. This is because they only have one gene that controls red and green sensation (as a comparison, humans have one more copy), and for males with only one X chromosome, only one possibility is obtained, while females with two types of heterozygotes can obtain one more color vision and become tricolor vision.

From this perspective, it's likely that some women are really more proficient in color than men, and that's all victory for the X chromosome.