A FETUS might learn to see before it is born. So much light penetrates a pregnant woman’s tummy that her fetus may develop vision in the final two months of pregnancy.

We have long known that fetuses can smell, taste and hear. Marco Del Giudice at the University of Turin in Italy wondered if there was enough light present for them to see, too.

He measured the amount of light that could penetrate through to a typical woman’s uterus and found that in a naked woman, about 0.1 to 1 per cent of ambient light would get in (Developmental Psychology, DOI: 10.1002/dev.20506).

In bright sunlight, a fetus could receive light equivalent to that found in a typically lit house.