this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2024
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Big bird has forward facing eyes, which is usually the mark of a predator.
Elefants have them too!
I'm sure there is an exception for creatures made from fabric and foam, somewhere.
Makes sense. Evolution gives prey animals eyes with as wide a field of vision as possible, so they can detect predators better. Elephants are too large for predators to mess with and so is big bird.
The elephant in the picture though is smaller than a mouse
The reference mouse is oversized
But the elephant is also roughly the size of a duck.
Can confirm. I measured on my screen, estimating the trunk length extended, and it's about 6 cm trunk to tail (or 2⅜" in the US).
I had to go look it up. Not sure that picture is accurate, mind, it’s the only one I could find. (Though lots of comments about herds being led by a blind elephant…. I’m sure there’s a joke in there.)
Maybe it evolved from a predatory ancestor and didn't get selected for different position of the eyes?
We know from Big Bird's extended family that his species has a wide spread of individual variation, and given that none of them reside in the wild none of them are likely to suffer predation due to what would otherwise be a mal-adaptation, providing a springboard for even more genetic variation from generation to generation.
Just look at how wildly different looking specific humans can be from one another, even within a single community.
And dragons have wide-set eyes in pretty much every depiction. So that brings up the question: What was hunting all the dragons?