Really, who owns the biggest eyes in the world? Most will begin to guess: a whale, a sperm whale … Not the most far-sighted will remember an elephant. But no, these giants are not the owners of the "most-most" eyes. The giant squid, which lives mainly at great depths, has the largest eyes in the world.
His organs of vision, having a diameter of up to twenty-eight (!) centimeters, allow him to see the danger from afar in the twilight of the ocean. There is someone to fear this predator. The largest of the toothed whales - sperm whales - are not averse to feasting on this marine predator. Nothing can oppose the squid, so for him there is only one option for getting rid of the giant's teeth: escape. And for this you need to be the first to notice the danger.
According to biologists, a giant squid at a depth of five hundred meters can spot a sperm whale at a distance of up to one hundred and twenty meters. The largest eyes in the world could appear in an animal that lives in just such conditions. For the gloomy ocean depths, this is quitea long distance, giving a chance for salvation.
However, one would expect that the inhabitants of the twilight would have the largest eyes in the world. Consider animals that are nocturnal. Those not equipped, like bats, with a natural "locator" are bound to have disproportionately large eyes that are better suited for the night.
However, the question of the presence of proportionality or lack thereof is the subject of an idle discussion. Nature itself is rational, and if animals have eyes that are too big in our opinion, it just means that they have become so in the process of evolution.
But the enemy of the squid - the sperm whale - does not need such big eyes. In the process of evolution, he developed another device for detecting food at a great distance - “sonar”, approximately the same in principle as that of bats. Interestingly, in the dispute between the natural locator and large eyes, the locator wins. About three-quarters of the sperm whale's diet is squid. Only great fertility saves them from total destruction.
The world's largest eyes in proportion to body size belong to the Philippine tarsier. With this record, the animal even got into the Guinness Book of Records. This small animal (body length up to ten centimeters), as you might guess, is nocturnal.
What are the largest eyes in the world in a person - it is not known for certain.
It is clear thatrepresentatives of the Mongoloid race can hardly claim the title of owner of the largest eyes. Some sites point to the American Kim Goodman, who, through some manipulation, gained the ability to roll out his eyes by eleven (!) Millimeters. The sight is not pleasant. Others claim that Ukrainian model Masha Telnaya has the biggest "natural" eyes. Whether this is really so, or whether the publications are just exercises of jaundiced journalists, is unknown.
Big eyes are not always beautiful and not always a sign of he alth. For example, one of the symptoms of thyroid disease (Graves' disease) is "bulging" eyes. The disease is quite common. It has been suffered from time immemorial. For example, it is believed that the emperor Commodus, the last of the Antonine dynasty, was ill with it. This is evidenced by his sculptural images. On the busts of Commodus, the eyes have a look characteristic of a thyroid disease.
