to understand how some prey animals see
differently than we do let’s play a game
tilt your head and body to the side what
happens
everything looks sideways kind of
obvious well for one scientist it turns
out that this little problem of our eye
not rotating very much in our head was
the answer to an evolutionary puzzle no
one had ever cracked dr. Marty banks and
dr. William sprig are taking us to the
San Francisco Zoo they are on the hunt
to understand why some animals have
different-shaped pupils and how their
pupil shape helps them survive the pupil
is the actual hole in our eye that lets
light bounce to receptors in the back of
our eye those receptors then send
signals to our brain to be processed
it’s kind of like a camera that has an
aperture where you can open and close it
to let more or less light in while
collecting pictures of different pupil
shapes Marty noticed something that no
one else had ever noticed before the
animals with horizontal elongated pupils
there were two things that they were
exceedingly likely to have one was eyes
on the side of their head and the other
is that they were prey animals that
graze typically that is worried about
other animals approaching on the ground
to possibly attack them
but what happens when the goats go to
lower their heads to graze do these
horizontal shape pupils move if they
don’t move all the goat will see is the
ground and that wouldn’t be very useful
to see predators what it our idea about
the horizontal pupil is it should remain
parallel to the ground that way they can
see predators that way they can also see
in front of them if they have to run
from a predator let’s see what they do
the head up in the head down if Marty’s
theory is correct
a goats pupil will actually physically
move when they put their head down like
this there we go looks parallel on the
ground yep it’s definitely horizontal
looks like we see that movement in every
one of these guys is it Marty and his
colleagues discovered that goats do move
their eyes to be parallel with the
ground these eyes are rotating through
dozens of degrees that’s a big movement
bigger than we can do oh yeah rotating
pupils in grazing animals seems obvious
now but actually scientists had never
really thought about it before Marty and
his colleagues started their research it
was very surprising to me that had been
part of the discussion sooner even among
ourselves when his common Barisan that
we didn’t think of it right off
differently than we do let’s play a game
tilt your head and body to the side what
happens
everything looks sideways kind of
obvious well for one scientist it turns
out that this little problem of our eye
not rotating very much in our head was
the answer to an evolutionary puzzle no
one had ever cracked dr. Marty banks and
dr. William sprig are taking us to the
San Francisco Zoo they are on the hunt
to understand why some animals have
different-shaped pupils and how their
pupil shape helps them survive the pupil
is the actual hole in our eye that lets
light bounce to receptors in the back of
our eye those receptors then send
signals to our brain to be processed
it’s kind of like a camera that has an
aperture where you can open and close it
to let more or less light in while
collecting pictures of different pupil
shapes Marty noticed something that no
one else had ever noticed before the
animals with horizontal elongated pupils
there were two things that they were
exceedingly likely to have one was eyes
on the side of their head and the other
is that they were prey animals that
graze typically that is worried about
other animals approaching on the ground
to possibly attack them
but what happens when the goats go to
lower their heads to graze do these
horizontal shape pupils move if they
don’t move all the goat will see is the
ground and that wouldn’t be very useful
to see predators what it our idea about
the horizontal pupil is it should remain
parallel to the ground that way they can
see predators that way they can also see
in front of them if they have to run
from a predator let’s see what they do
the head up in the head down if Marty’s
theory is correct
a goats pupil will actually physically
move when they put their head down like
this there we go looks parallel on the
ground yep it’s definitely horizontal
looks like we see that movement in every
one of these guys is it Marty and his
colleagues discovered that goats do move
their eyes to be parallel with the
ground these eyes are rotating through
dozens of degrees that’s a big movement
bigger than we can do oh yeah rotating
pupils in grazing animals seems obvious
now but actually scientists had never
really thought about it before Marty and
his colleagues started their research it
was very surprising to me that had been
part of the discussion sooner even among
ourselves when his common Barisan that
we didn’t think of it right off
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