Tribe of 'sea gypsies' discovered

[phoebe]

A TRIBE of sea gypsies may have evolved differently from land dwellers to develop a remarkable ability to see clearly underwater, Swedish researchers believe.

They have found that children of the Moken tribe, who wander among islands scattered off the coasts of Thailand and Burma, can see submerged objects more than twice as sharply as European children.

snip

The Moken children are renowned for their diving skills and their prowess in spotting the tiniest sea creatures among pebbles and rocks. Nomads whose origins remain unknown, they claw a living from the Andaman Sea, retreating to thatched huts on land during the summer monsoon season.

Anna Gislen, a researcher from Lund University, led a team to compare the vision of Moken children with that of volunteers from European families holidaying on Surin, an island near the Thai-Burmese maritime border. She discovered the Moken children, aged between 8 and 13, could shrink the pupils of their eyes by about 20 per cent more than the Europeans to deliver sharper resolution underwater.

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,6713802%5E13762,00.html

Fascinating stuff ---

[LeftCoast]

1. And for only $9.95 you can have your very own Sea Gypsies at home!

Er...oh wait. Maybe that was Sea Monkies. My bad. :)

[Pert_UK]

2. Don't tell Kevin Costner - the last thing we need is Waterworld 2...

:evilgrin:

Good story, although I bet that Costner could make it boring!

P.

[Robin Hood]

3. This would imply proof of evolution.

That's for all of you creationists out there.

[laconicsax]

4. Evolution has already been proven

Evolution is as much a theory as the Theory of Gravity. Don't let the Creationists get you when they trot out their hackneyed "It's only a theory" crap.

In science, a theory is something that is used to explain a group of facts or observations and has also been tested and shown true for many of those facts/observations. It isn't just some random guess about how things work (a hypothesis), it's a proven, verifiable occurance. Many different aspects of evolution have been proven.

The reason that evolution as a whole is still a theory is because the only way to conclusively prove all parts of it would be to be able to not only travel backwards in time, but to observe a phenomenon that frequently takes over over millions of years to get from point A to point B.

[Marthe48]

8. Beak of the Finch

is a book detailing the observations of evolution among the finches on Galapagos Islands--I read it over 5 yrs. ago. It was about the ways the bird species adapted physically to their environment. By Rosemary and Peter Grant

[TheReligiousLeft]

19. Beak o' the Finch

I'm reading it right now. Great stuff!

[Marthe48]

22. Beak of the Finch

It sure is. After I read this, I wanted to read Darwin's Origin of Species, but I was too busy then and still too busy after all this time. Something to look forward to.

[starroute]

11. They've probably been there 50,000 years

That's plenty long enough to have evolved adaptations to their environment.

"These wandering sea dwellers are believed by some experts to have been the first inhabitants of the Andaman coastal regions of Thailand, Myanmar and Malaysia. Today only several thousand of them remain here, with few still living the traditional life that took them to sea in their small boats for seven or eight months of the year.

"The Moken are related to other ‘sea gypsy’ peoples inhabiting island archipelagos all the way to the Philippines. Their language appears unrelated to any other, and their real origin is unknown. Some experts believe it was the ancestors of the Moken who drew the paintings found in caves in Phang Nga Bay and at other locations. There is a lot of conjecture and little concrete information about their origins and history."

The Moken - sea gypsies

(It's a nice-looking site -- lots of gorgeous pictures.)

[TheBigGuy]

21. are they going to evolve fins and blowholes, too???

more mammals returning to the sea, huh?

See..it starts with the eyes...whats the next step in this evolution?

[WindRavenX]

5. ...so did they have the WMD?

I'm still waiting, Dubya...

[kayell]

6. Nah, that was just a hypothesis

[R Hickey]

7. Some sea gypsies are beach bums,

but not all beach bums can be sea gypsies.

Jim Rockford lived in a trailer by the sea, yet nobody would call him a sea gypsy. He was TV detective. And before that, Mavrick.

[havocmom]

9. Are their eyes really all that different

or are they better at observing cuz their lives depend on it?
And isn't the pupil size changed by some sort of muscle? If you exercize, the body parts you use are the ones that get strong.

There are eye exercises that can help a lot of people.

[reprobate]

10. "eye exercises that can help" Yes, But.........

When the change in eye accuity is measure in the very young (age 8) it at least IMPLIES a genetic component passed from parent to child.

And that at least IMPLIES evolution.

Of course, if they told the researchers "Goodbye, and thanks for all the fish" all bets are off.

[DiverDave]

13. If they

can see well underwater, they would see a blur on land.
I cannot believe that someones eyes can change focus THAT much.

Dave

[truthisfreedom]

14. try to keep an open mind.

their pupils can close more. that's not the same as changing the focus of the cornea. there's a type of camera called a pin-hole camera that doesn't need a lens... it works because it has a small hole instead. the smaller the hole, the sharper the focus. that's the principle here... the only difficulty being, a small iris (pupil) doesn't let through much light, so they must have greater retinal sensitivity as well. or else, they can only perform these feats during very bright-light situations, such as during mid-day sun.

[fishnfla]

17. sorry but...

simple optics are at play here. Snells law and the index of refraction. Pinhole improvment of visual acuity can only work in air . the index of refraction of water is completly different. thats why we need to wear masks in water.

smaller pupil size has nothing to do with better visual acuity under water, because it(the pupil) cannot change the index of refraction of water, a constant. some other refractive condition, must be at play, if this story is true. probably adaptation and conditioning.

Or else this is just a big hoax.

[Superfly]

12. "Discovered?"

That's pretty offensive to the sea-gypsies.

Explorer: "Look! A new tribe of sea-gypsies!"
Sea gypsie: "New? We've been here for hundreds of years. Where've you been?"

[smallprint]

15. this is some racist bs

ok so these moken kids, who are working long hours underwater all the time are being compared to "volunteers from European families holidaying" -- the unwritten assumption is that these white kids are the NORMAL ones, and whatever attributes they have are defined as normal, and anything different is a DEVIATION, and quite possibly a different SPECIES altogether, which makes it ok if we gather them up and put them in laboratories or just sell them into sweatshop slavery...

you get the idea.

[Peregrine]

16. What crawled up your butt

There is no mention of a different species. This is an important find within evolutionary biology.

[smallprint]

18. questionable science

sorry i should have written something like /sarcasm off in my post, because i was indeed exaggerating for the purpose of argument. namely being that the history of biological anthropology is full of theories of why poor, dark-skinned, indigenous people are genetically "other" or "deviant" from europeans. as i noted, the control group for this study were a bunch of wealthy white kids on vacation, not exactly a random sample of humanity! since the methodology is suspect, the results can't be taken seriously, imho...

[MrMonk]

20. Simple answers are not always the most interesting

Shouldn't the researchers show why the simpler reason doesn't apply?
For example, couldn't the childrens' "prowess" in separating signs of sea creatures from the background of the sea floor be the result of experience gained since early childhood? Sort of like their "prowess" in diving?