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> primates ... lost the ability to synthesize vitamin C eons ago, and as a result evolved excellent color vision for finding fruits I have a feeling this must
by griffzhowl 1y ago
> primates ... lost the ability to synthesize vitamin C eons ago, and as a result evolved excellent color vision for finding fruits
I have a feeling this must be the other way around. The ancient primates had a diet high in fruits, which is why they could survive without harm when the gene for synthesizing vitamin C mutated into a non-functional form. They must have had the colour vision for detecting ripe fruits before that.
- LarsDu88 1y agoThis is probably the more likely scenario, but it's really a chicken or the egg problem. Hopefully some molecular clock based research will iron out which one came first.
- griffzhowl 11mo agoI don't think it's a chicken or egg problem. We still have the non-functional form of the gene for synthesizing vitamin C in our genomes. It's been identified, and the mutation which knocked out it's functionality is known. This was a single event. If the primate who had this variant didn't already have a diet high in vitamin C, it wouldn't have survived. And since their diet was high in vitamin C, they obviously had the sensory apparatus necessary for detecting the food sources