"B" is for blind cave fish

[jonsdigs]

"B" is for blind cave fish
Boston Birds and Fish Examiner
March 27
George Sommers


Here's looking at you, kid (not).

Here's a fish that's a novelty at least three times over. It has no eyes (hence the blind), no skin pigment (effectively albino) and is one of the few "tropical" fish whose home range extends into the United States.

Full Article

[Azurerana]

"Fun fin fact:: Experiments in "resighting" blind cave fish have had positive results, lending hope that the technology can be applied to blind humans."

A) It's not technology, it is genetics.

B) We are not fish.

C) Cave tetra still have all three populations: sighted, partially sighted, and blind.

D) Only a small amount of human blindness is genetically determined. Something like the tendency towards macular degeneration.

E) This "journalist" is jumping to conclusions. Looking for clues to blindness in cavefish may have some application in sight research, but humans don't have sighted and unsighted populations like cavefish do. Science was looking at this issue 110 years ago, but came to the conclusion that except for a few rare cases, human blindness was not analogous to cavefish blindness.