Evolution...Such a Strange Animal
Thursday, 16. March 2006, 16:36:40
So I was testing out some parsing script and needed an embedded item to test. I thought YouTube would be perfect, so I quickly went there, grabbed some random video and pasted it in. Testing it out, I watched the video...it was of this little baby rat monkey creature with huge freakin eyes. I guess it's a mix between an ewok and a gremlin. So this is the video I saw:
Now, it peaked my curiosity, so I did some searching around and found out that this little creature has the largest eyes to body size ratio of any other animal (or was it mammal?). Anyways, it's eyes are so big that it cannot turn them, it must turn it's entire head, which can turn a full 180 degrees in either direction. So why would it need such big eyes? To see in the dark. It hunts it's prey which includes insects, but also animals (!). Okay, so for some reason, my mind wanders more. If this thing can evolve to have huge eyes that are immobile so it can see in the dark, what's to prevent humans from moving in that same direction? Would it be worth it to you to see in the dark if it meant you had to turn your head to see? Imagine the implications - cheating on tests, sitting in a dentist's chair, driving, the list goes on. Well, what if everyone agreed that the benefits outweighed the costs? What if everyone wanted huge rat baby monkey eyes so they could see in the dark. If everyone on the planet agreed to turn their head and leave their eyes fixed forward, maybe after a period of a few million years our ancestors could have these same rat baby monkey eyes. So here I am thinking about how I should convince everyone to turn their head and not their eyes. You're great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grand children's night vision depends on it!
Now, it peaked my curiosity, so I did some searching around and found out that this little creature has the largest eyes to body size ratio of any other animal (or was it mammal?). Anyways, it's eyes are so big that it cannot turn them, it must turn it's entire head, which can turn a full 180 degrees in either direction. So why would it need such big eyes? To see in the dark. It hunts it's prey which includes insects, but also animals (!). Okay, so for some reason, my mind wanders more. If this thing can evolve to have huge eyes that are immobile so it can see in the dark, what's to prevent humans from moving in that same direction? Would it be worth it to you to see in the dark if it meant you had to turn your head to see? Imagine the implications - cheating on tests, sitting in a dentist's chair, driving, the list goes on. Well, what if everyone agreed that the benefits outweighed the costs? What if everyone wanted huge rat baby monkey eyes so they could see in the dark. If everyone on the planet agreed to turn their head and leave their eyes fixed forward, maybe after a period of a few million years our ancestors could have these same rat baby monkey eyes. So here I am thinking about how I should convince everyone to turn their head and not their eyes. You're great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grand children's night vision depends on it!
