Goats have creepy eyes
Goats are adorable. I mean, have you seen baby goats?
Awwwww, such a cute peek-a-boo. But wait, zoom in a little on the goat’s eyes. Give it a little stare. Do you see anything out of the ordinary? Perhaps something… Strange? Odd? Or do you feel a slight, inexplicable sense of unease?
Let me give you a moment.
*
*
*
*
*
DO YOU OR DO YOU NOT SEE?!
I was today-years-old when I realised goats have rectangular pupils.
Okay, that was not true. I actually read about this a few years ago in a book by Haruki Murakami, which, by the way, you should totally check out. I proceeded to google for the said images, and experienced about five minutes of heart-cringing disbelief.
Then, like most people, I forgot about it. Until one day when I decided to visit our local goat farm here in Singapore. I was hand-feeding a goat with a bunch of hay, smiling at them up close, before our eyes met — the pupil-to-pupil sort of met. Not a glance, not a glaze over, but an actual eye-to-eye connection. And my heart stopped.
Photo credits: Jacob Spencer
Let me just highlight at this juncture that goats are cool, and their eyes have not resulted in hate or anything like that. I still like goats, but man, those eyes sucked the soul out of me, every, single, time.
Imagine if you wake up in the middle of the night, and find a dozen of these goats lined up around you, staring. And then they all bleat at the same time.
Very uncomfortable indeed.
Why are goats’ pupils rectangular though?
Good question, and the answer, in short, lies in its position in the food chain.
As herbivores, goats need to be the look out for predators. These horizontal slit pupils, while nerve wrecking to us, actually allows them to have a broader line of sight. This allows them to see any potential danger better from their peripheral vision.
With a wider field of vision, they can also monitor the surrounding terrain to plot an escape plan. Their eyes can even rotate in the head to maintain parallelism with the ground. This explains why goats’ eyes stay level with the horizon even when they bend down to graze.
How cool!
Photo credits: Fernando Gutierrez
Essentially, ecological niche, which tells you whether you’re the hunter or the hunted, determines your eye shape. Circular pupils, or what we consider to be normal pupils, belong to predators. Side-slanted ones like that of the goat’s tend to belong to preys or those that graze.
Of course, there are other more common slit pupils that we are familiar with in the animal kingdom. For example, domestic cats have slit pupils to let in light accordingly such that they can see in the dark, and not be blinded by the blazing sun.
Hopefully, one day, we’ll all be accustomed to looking into the adorable eyes of the rectangular-pupil-eyed goats.
What do you think? Are these eyes more cool than freaky? Would you be open to having rectangular pupils for a wider field of vision? Leave a comment and let me know!
