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> Instead of having good vision, dogs, horses, mice, antelope – in fact, most mammals generally – have long damp snouts that they use to sniff things with. It i
by rowyourboat 9y ago
> Instead of having good vision, dogs, horses, mice, antelope – in fact, most mammals generally – have long damp snouts that they use to sniff things with. It is we humans, and apes and monkeys, who are different.
What a load of bull. Dogs and wolves eyes are facing forward, as do cats', owls', jumping spiders' main eyes, and generally those of most hunting predators. Eyes facing forward is good for depth perception and judging speeds and thus hunting, a bigger field of view is good for detecting threats from any and all directions and thus for prey animals. The location of the eyes depends mainly on where the animals sits on the predator<->prey scale. Apes tend to be apex predators, thus the predator eye location.
- geon 9y agoDog have worse resolution, color perception and depth perception than humans. http://servicedogcentral.org/content/node/391 http://servicedogcentral.org/content/node/391
- rowyourboat 9y agoI was contesting the statement that forward-facing eyes somehow make us special. They don't. They are a trait we share with most predators.
- geon 9y agoThe eyes of dogs are less forward facing than on humans.
- woodandsteel 9y agoBut our primate ancestors who originally evolved forward-facing eyes were not predators. Makes much more sense to think it was to help in swinging from limb to limb in trees.
- simoom22 9y agoAll primates having forward facing eyes, but lemurs and sloths are only apex predators if you're a berry.
- rowyourboat 9y agoEvolution is not straightforward. If a carnivore changes to a plant-based diet, chances are some carnivore traits are going to remain, if they are not too hardly selected against. See panda bears, fruit bats, ...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dghughes 9y agoThe best eyes/most complex eyes in the world goes to the mantis shrimp. http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/07/03/natures-most-amazing-eyes-just-got-a-bit-weirder/ http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/07/03/natures-m... A few snippets: a compound eye, made of thousands of small units that each detects light independently 12 to 16 different photoreceptors in its midband has six photoreceptors dedicated to...UV incredibly sophisticated UV detectors
- rowyourboat 9y agoA testament to how important signal processing is: Despite its 22 different photoreceptors rather than the humans three (four if you count cones), mantis shrimp can only distinguish a limited number of colors as their brains do not mix the inputs from the different receptors, but rather just go with the strongest one to determine the color of an object. http://www.businessinsider.com/the-mantis-shrimp-color-vision-system-2014-1?IR=T http://www.businessinsider.com/the-mantis-shrimp-color-visio...