Even cats—as well as other animals with fantastic night vision cannot see where no light is available. For vision to occur SOME light needs to bounce off of objects and into even the keenest eye for there to be vision.

Unlikely, but … what if it’s not about gaining the feature, but not having lost it? Perhaps human ancestors once had the tapetum, but a single mutation long ago broke the characteristic. And this kid just happened to get a reverse mutation that unbroke it.

If human ancestors once had a tapetum, but humans went on to lose it, we should see the presence of the tapetum in some close human relatives, but we don’t. No primates have a tapetum lucidum except a few species of lemurs and aye-ayes, and the evidence is more consistent with these species evolving the tapetum after they split from the lineage that went on to produce humans (and other primates).

If just a single mutation broke the characteristic in humans, then the remains of that genetic pathway would still be present in the human genome, and we should be able to identify all the genes involved, and find that all are intact except for one, and that one that is broken must be broken in such a way that a simple single-step mutation can restore it (in other words, it must be broken by a point mutation. If it were broken by a deletion, or frame-shift mutation, then it cannot be fixed by a single-step mutation. Note that in your example of the Vitamin C pathway, there are no known cases of any human being or human relative with the same broken pathway re-evolving the intact pathway, as the broken gene is broken in an irreversible manner).

And we have already sequenced to human genome. I don’t know if anyone has ever actually looked to see if there are tapetum producing gene pathways in it, but that is something we can actually go ahead and test.

Assuming that it is real: there are 7 billion people on the planet. 7 billion people born- each of us have some (usually nominal) mutations to our genetic structure.

7 billion of us born- you would expect, logically, there to be some interesting mutations here and there in our population. Whether he has found a mutation to bring back a tapetum that our ancestors once had- or if his genes have stumbled upon a similar mutation- we don’t know.

We don’t know his ancestors. His ancestors may have had all the pieces of the puzzle (minus one) in their genes and it took one final mutation to get the needed “ability”.

Lots of animals on the planet have advanced night vision- and quite likely this ability has evolved on multiple occasions. Certainly- the reverse has happened many times- no-one would question a mutation that causes blindness- and this has happened perhaps thousands of times in our history.

I’m not saying this is real- just that we shouldn’t discredit it without an investigation. The fact that the story originated from You-tube and not a reputable news outlet makes it suspicious. However, without a scientific look- we’ll never know.

It could very well be that the genes for night vision have existed with certain people in China for many generations. Until recently many parts of China have been isolated from Western “eyes”- we really don’t know what’s been going on in their villages. Who is to say he doesn’t come from a long line of ancestors with augmented night vision? He doesn’t have to have had all the mutations necessary for a tapetum in one freak mutation.

One last comment- I RTA that was linked and the comment about video not capturing his eyes “Flashing” like they would with a tapetum- this could be explained (if this isn’t a hoax) by his genes finding a different solution that doesn’t glow like a cats eye- or him having an intermediate step- he doesn’t have a fully formed one like a cat but has genes that make him one step more similar.

I’m sure the Chinese government will study the boy and if it really is true, they’ll produce a new supersoldier.

IIRC primates and parrots are the only mammals & birds respectively that can not synthesize their own Vitamin C. Primates have all of necessary steps in the enzyme chain to synthesize Vitamin C, except one. So such things do happen.

It would be cool, but I suppose it would only work if the gene were fixed prior to fetal development!! :)