Curious to consider that by being an apex consumer, it is a predator by default, even if its prey is flora.
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protist@mander.xyz 2 days agoI’m going to guess as an island species, it had no natural predators, and therefore the evolutionary pressure for it to have a wide field of view did not exist
Reddfugee42@lemmy.world 2 days ago
pjwestin@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I mean, it it has pupils like that, it has a wide field of vision. That’s the whole point of rectangular pupils. I would assume that having front-facing eyes would also give it depth perception, but maybe it needed that for making difficult jumps or something?
fristislurper@feddit.nl 2 days ago
Probably, although there would still need to be some evolutionary pressure for forward facing eyes… I wonder what it is.
AngrySquirrel@lemm.ee 2 days ago
Depth perception in advantageous. It is even beneficial for island goat activities.
With the absence of natural predators, the disadvantages of the narrow field of view are mostly outweighed by the advantages of depth perception .
abies_exarchia@lemm.ee 2 days ago
Not necessarily, with “genetic drift” random phenotypic changes can happen that have a neutral effect on fitness. So if they don’t need side-facing eyes, then this can just happen randomly. Especially if the sideways eyes are in some way “costly” to maintain
kurwa@lemmy.world 2 days ago
If sideways eyes are “costly” compared to forward facing eyes, then that would technically be a push for forward facing.
jol@discuss.tchncs.de 2 days ago
Or goats just find forward facing eyes to be sexier.
stephen01king@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Depth perception.
BleatingZombie@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I’ve always wondered if there was a term for evolutionary changes that weren’t needed!
wischi@programming.dev 2 days ago
I’m not sure for that specific case, but in the general case there doesn’t need to be evolutionary pressure for change. If there is no pressure one way or the other random mutations can (and will over time) cause change without environmental reason (genetic drift).
Num10ck@lemmy.world 2 days ago
maybe living in caves?