Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by rescue_dont_buy 2492 days ago
Very interesting. Anyone else have examples, cases, etc. of this sort of thing occurring?
5 comments

Not sure what you consider it "this sort of thing", but native speakers of Australian aboriginal language Guugu Yimithirr have nearly superhuman sense of direction. They can automatically tell where is north, south, east, and west.

http://pages.ucsd.edu/~jhaviland/Publications/ETHOSw.Diags.p...

Sounds like something that might have had survival value during 50.000 years in a big nondescript landscape.

Yes, I'm making an evolutionary guess.

I believe they don't actually use left and right, but use the cardinal direction instead. So it's something they need to be constantly aware of. Ie: their kids song would go "Put your south hand in, put your south hand out.."
Indonesia’s Bajau people, who for generations have spent the majority of their days diving and hunting underwater, have genetic adaptations that include spleens that are around 50% larger than those of their land-based neighbors. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/04/indonesian-divers-ha...

You also have some populations who have been living in high altitude for many generations that have genetic adatptions to low-oxygen environments. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/07/tibetans-inherited-h...

THere's a great series of books by the late William Corliss documenting anomalies (across all of the sciences) containing stuff like this.

https://www.science-frontiers.com/sourcebk.htm#Biology

These seem awesome, quite the number of anomalies he addresses.
The woman who doesn't feel pain: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-477...

You'd imagine this would be basically a death sentence, but she's made it to old age. She also has a lack of adrenaline response, so is basically super chill. Hard to argue this is a beneficial mutation, but perhaps as technology evolves we could self-monitor artifically and not have to worry about these deeply unpleasant physiological warning bells?

This one is genetic rather than learnt, but some people have tetrachromacy. It gives them better colour vision:

http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jul-aug/06-humans-with-supe...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy