Posted on 05/14/2011 3:48:05 PM PDT by ventanax5
Daniel Kish has been sightless since he was a year old. Yet he can mountain bike. And navigate the wilderness alone. And recognize a building as far away as 1,000 feet. How? The same way bats can see in the dark...
The first thing Daniel Kish does, when I pull up to his tidy gray bungalow in Long Beach, California, is make fun of my driving. “You’re going to leave it that far from the curb?” he asks. He’s standing on his stoop, a good 10 paces from my car. I glance behind me as I walk up to him. I am, indeed, parked about a foot and a half from the curb.
The second thing Kish does, in his living room a few minutes later, is remove his prosthetic eyeballs. He does this casually, like a person taking off a smudged pair of glasses. The prosthetics are thin convex shells, made of acrylic plastic, with light brown irises. A couple of times a day they need to be cleaned. “They get gummy,” he explains. Behind them is mostly scar tissue. He wipes them gently with a white cloth and places them back in.
Kish was born with an aggressive form of cancer called retinoblastoma, which attacks the retinas. To save his life, both of his eyes were removed by the time he was 13 months old. Since his infancy — Kish is now 44 — he has been adapting to his blindness in such remarkable ways that some people have wondered if he’s playing a grand practical joke. But Kish, I can confirm, is completely blind.
(Excerpt) Read more at mensjournal.com ...
Our minds can visualize things, even scenes we’ve never seen. I’ve often wondered what a blind persons mind can visualize. I’m talking about a person totally blind from birth.
That’s an amazing story - thanks for posting it.
Your link tries to activate my printer!!!
Can’t find the article, there was a young black teenager with the same cancer, and loss of sight, but had learned the same ability to see and navigate by sound. Remarkable!
There was a show on television called ‘Stan Lee’s Superhumans’. On one of the episodes they profiled a guy just like this. He clicks his tough while moving his head back and forth and is able to navigate around obstacles using bat-like echolocation. The show set up a bunch of obstacles and cars and had him ride a tandem bike with the host and completely navigated the course without a collision, albeit somewhat slowly.
The blind teenager’s name was Ben Underwood. He passed away a couple of years ago to, in his mother’s words, “be with his savior Jesus Christ.” This man had a remarkably positive attitude as you’ll see on his web site. Explore the Video Gallery.
DearDevil...the man with no fear.
DareDevil...the man with no fear.
Really fascinating, thanks. When you think about how teensy little bats can do it, it makes sense that humans have enough processing power, if they can learn to apply it as Kish has.
My great uncle who was blind could play 8 musical instruments.
Longer ago than I care to think about, I watched a B&W WWII movie about an American soldier who lost his eyesight and was trained to see by sound.
The winner of the recent Van Cliburn International Piano competition, Nobuyuki Tsujii, was born blind. He is phenomenal.
http://www.cliburn.org/index.php?page=winner_detail&compID=149
Thank you! I couldn’t “find” him...I’m so glad you did!
There would be a few things he still couldn’t “see” such as the image on a computer screen or TV, or ordinary writing. But what he can “see” lets him get around amazingly well, at least amazing to persons with functional vision. I wonder if skeet shooting is possible with echolocation.
That is remarkable.
Thanks for the link to the story.
Fascinating story. Thanks for posting.
The local Model A club (old fords) has a blind guy that does their brakes. He does it all by feel.
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