Unlocking the Eyes | Explorer

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·Nov 11, 2024

[Music] What boggles my mind about the eye is everything. But I'm really, really excited by the advances in technology made possible by research, not just into the eye, but into how natural selection caused it to be what it is. The next few decades are going to be really exciting ones for eye research.

Eyes and survival are related because survival is all about the relationship between a creature and everything else—the outside world: predators, prey, potential mates. The eye is one of the most complex conduits between those two things: the outside world and the creature who not only wants to survive but wants its kids to survive, its species to survive.

The animal eye that I love the most? Goat eyes! I mean, as soon as you hear for the first time about the rectangular shape of their pupil, you go, “I don't believe it,” or “It's not going to be as cool as it really is.” But then you look it up, and you're like, “Come on, goats!” But it's true—very, very evolutionarily helpful to goats.

It's important to learn about how other eyes work because, well, one, just the joy of learning new things about the world, but two, we can learn more about how to take things into our control. Nature has done a lot to help us evolve eyes that work for us—other animals have done the same. But what comes next? Should we see more? Can we see more? And the ways those are going to help the quality of our lives and the quantity of each of our lives is really fascinating.

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