The human eye is stacked with millions of cone-shaped cells that help us recognise colours. For the normal kind like us, there are three types of cones which allow vision for about one million distinctive colours. Birds, insects, fishes and reptiles have a fourth type of cone cell that extends their colour perception, making them see the UV range as well. Although evolution has mostly scrubbed that fourth cone from the mammalian lineage, there is evidence that a small group of humans may have a genetic variant that allows for tetrachromacy.
So a tetrachromat will be able to see, roughly 100 times more colours than an average human being.
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Concetta Antico is a tetrachromat. “It’s shocking how little colour people see in their lives.” Says Antico. The fact that she’s the only one (one of the handful) in the entire world who sees the world a lot more vividly than the others, makes her a really lucky person. When she looks at a leaf, she sees much more than just green. “Around the edge I’ll see orange or red or purple in the shadow; you might see dark green, but I’ll see violet, turquoise, blue,” she said. “It’s like a mosaic of color.” Deciding to show how she sees the world, Concetta decided to be a painter. She conjures masterpieces in one sitting. All her paintings are insanely colorful, and feature shades you wouldn't generally expect to see. Concetta, to me, is even luckier than Frane.
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