Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In
Speaker 1: our last episode, we discussed a common but enthralling literary
Speaker 1: motif in Irish mythology, the triple and the sevenfold I
Speaker 1: three or seven pupils three or seven iris is found
Speaker 1: in the eyes of beautiful heroes, divine seers, destructive monsters.
Speaker 1: We also discussed the structure and functionality of the human
Speaker 1: eye and the rare instances in which we actually see
Speaker 1: double pupils in human eyes. In this episode, we're going
Speaker 1: to explore more curious eyes from the natural world, as
Speaker 1: well as more accounts of marvelous eyes from ancient history
Speaker 1: and literature. But first, a pop culture update. Um At
Speaker 1: the end of last episode we were talking about I
Speaker 1: spoke briefly about some some double eyes that I've remembered
Speaker 1: from some movies, album covers, etcetera. Well, Our our good
Speaker 1: producer Seth provided us with two additional examples of double
Speaker 1: eyes and popular culture that we didn't think of last time.
Speaker 1: Number one, the double irises and pupils of aminet. In
Speaker 1: two thousand, seventeens The Mummy. This is the Tom Cruise
Speaker 1: Mummy film. Oh boy, did not see it, but I
Speaker 1: think this is like the the titular Mummy, or at
Speaker 1: least one of them. I think she is the Mummy
Speaker 1: in this film. I'm okay, I haven't seen this one,
Speaker 1: not even on an airplane, but I'm not opposed to it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've seen a lot of crummy Mummy movies
Speaker 1: over the years, and usually there's something interesting in them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at least sometimes you get an Arnold Fosloo or something. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then the second example Seth brings up is the
Speaker 1: album cover to Uh Bubba by Haitian Canadian musician um
Speaker 1: K Trenada, featuring the artist with otherworldly blue eyes that
Speaker 1: have double pupils, double irises. I listened to a track
Speaker 1: from this album while we were working on notes. It
Speaker 1: was good. I haven't had a chance yet, but I
Speaker 1: do love the album cover. It's pretty great. Now. One
Speaker 1: of the sources that we mentioned in the last episode
Speaker 1: was the Evil Eye in early Irish literature and law.
Speaker 1: This was published in Celtica twenty four back in two
Speaker 1: thousand three. Uh and this was by Jacqueline borsch and Um,
Speaker 1: the author of Fergus Kelly is also cited on this
Speaker 1: paper because there's like a part one in a part two,
Speaker 1: but I believe we were we dealt with material from
Speaker 1: part one. Celtica. The journal this is in is a
Speaker 1: scholarly journal for Celtic studies out of the Dublin Institute
Speaker 1: for Advanced Studies. So most of this deals of course
Speaker 1: with Irish law, Irish traditions, Irish mythology, UM, and UH
Speaker 1: and in. Despite the popularity of this motif of the
Speaker 1: of the multiple pupils, multiple irises within the Irish tradition,
Speaker 1: we also encounter discussions of this sort of thing in
Speaker 1: other traditions as well, and bor shares a few of
Speaker 1: these well. The first one, UH comes to us from
Speaker 1: a plenty of the Elder and the Natural History. Plenty
Speaker 1: discusses individuals in Africa said to possess quote the power
Speaker 1: of fascination with the eyes and can even kill those
Speaker 1: on whom they fix their gaze for any length of time,
Speaker 1: more especially if their look denotes anger. Now that's your
Speaker 1: pretty basic evil eye scenario right there. And you encounter
Speaker 1: variations of this through throughout the world. UH. Based on
Speaker 1: the fact that, yes, you can shoot somebody a really
Speaker 1: terrible look, and you can you can almost feel it.
Speaker 1: Of course, going back into the ancient world, the belief
Speaker 1: was often that it was more than you know, giving
Speaker 1: somebody the stink I produced more than just a bad feeling,
Speaker 1: that it could literally curse them or cause them magical harm. Yes,
Speaker 1: But the neat thing here where it ties into what
Speaker 1: we're talking about in these episodes is uh Plenty goes
Speaker 1: on to connect this to multiple pupils quote. A still
Speaker 1: more remarkable circumstance is the fact that these persons have
Speaker 1: two pupils in each eye. Apollo Nides says that there
Speaker 1: are certain females of this description in Scythia who are
Speaker 1: known as the Bitha and Phi. Larches states that a
Speaker 1: tribe of the Theebe in Pontus, and many other persons
Speaker 1: as well have a double pupil in one eye and
Speaker 1: in the other the figure of a horse. Double pupil
Speaker 1: in one eye, the other the figure of a horse. Now,
Speaker 1: with passages of this kind, we're often faced with the
Speaker 1: question is this based on some distorted or exaggerated retelling
Speaker 1: of something that somebody actually saw, or is it just
Speaker 1: pure creative imagination or you know, tall tales, and it's
Speaker 1: always interesting to wonder about the former, But ancient accounts
Speaker 1: like Plenties are clearly full of the latter, especially when
Speaker 1: telling stories about peoples who live in far away parts
Speaker 1: of the globe. You know, this section that we're quoting
Speaker 1: from Plenty is from I can't remember what it's called,
Speaker 1: but there's like one of his books is all about
Speaker 1: the nations of the world, and it's just all these
Speaker 1: weird stories of like, here's a people who live somewhere
Speaker 1: far away, and here's this strange thing they do or uh,
Speaker 1: something that they wear that would be fascinating to to
Speaker 1: my readers. Like there's one part where he talks about
Speaker 1: a tribe of people somewhere who do not have heads
Speaker 1: and instead have eyes in their breasts. So, uh, it
Speaker 1: need not be the case that Plenty is necessarily here
Speaker 1: repeating a misunderstood or exaggerated story about somebody who actually
Speaker 1: had something like polycoria or some other unusual condition of
Speaker 1: the pupils. But of course it is always possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does make make you wonder, you know, to what
Speaker 1: extent would there be, like, you know, some account of
Speaker 1: an individual with this this rare condition, uh, some memory
Speaker 1: of this rare condition, and then it gets folded into
Speaker 1: some of these traditions and beliefs at one point or
Speaker 1: another in their long lives. Yes, though of course it
Speaker 1: could again just be something somebody made, like the people
Speaker 1: who don't have heads and have eyes in their breasts
Speaker 1: right right, Like, we can dream up individuals with like
Speaker 1: four arms, and it's pretty interesting and and we can
Speaker 1: draw all sorts of meaning from that, But it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that that people with four arms ever actually existed,
Speaker 1: you know, that there's any actual biological basis on which
Speaker 1: that was based. Though. I do think it's really interesting
Speaker 1: that he doesn't just say, okay, they've got two pupils
Speaker 1: in each eye, but that they've got two pupils in
Speaker 1: one eye and in the other eye a horse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And like my the first place my mind went was, Okay,
Speaker 1: is it actually shaped like a horse a distortion that
Speaker 1: is roughly horse shaped? Or is it Does it mean
Speaker 1: that this is like some sort of telephone game, you know,
Speaker 1: translation game version of horizontal pupil like one finds in
Speaker 1: the eye of a horse. That's interesting and that will
Speaker 1: tie into a scientific paper we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: in a bit. I found an editor's footnote in the
Speaker 1: Bostock translation of Plenty, which notes, quote, some of the
Speaker 1: commentators have supposed Plenty or phi Larcis, from whom he borrows,
Speaker 1: because remember, this isn't an original observation of Plenties. He's
Speaker 1: like copying this from some other writing of this person
Speaker 1: named phar Larcas, but phil Arcis from whom he borrows.
Speaker 1: Whether they were misled by the ambiguity of the Greek
Speaker 1: term eCos, which signifies either a horse or a tremulous
Speaker 1: motion of the eye. But even admitting this to be
Speaker 1: the case, the wonder is scarcely diminished, for we have
Speaker 1: the double pupil in one eye, while this supposed tremulous
Speaker 1: motion is confined to the other. So so if Fostuck
Speaker 1: is correct there, it's that this word had had a
Speaker 1: double meaning, and one of them was like a you know,
Speaker 1: a quivering of the eye. I guess I would assume
Speaker 1: that's like when somebody's eyes twitching. But yeah, you wonder, well,
Speaker 1: why why is it just that the other eyes twitching
Speaker 1: when when the first eye has two pupils in it.
Speaker 1: That's also strange. Maybe not as strange as a horse.
Speaker 1: Um I was. I was looking for answers on this
Speaker 1: as well, and I ran across the paper titled of
Speaker 1: the Papula Duplex and Other Tokens of an Evil Eye
Speaker 1: in the Light of Ophthalmology by Walton Brooks McDaniel, UM
Speaker 1: and uh. According to Brooks, here one Dr Kirby flower Smith,
Speaker 1: a professor of Latin and the at John Hopkins University,
Speaker 1: who had I looked at had died in UH interpreted
Speaker 1: the Plenty passage as having some sort of connection to
Speaker 1: the idea that the affliction of the eye was caused
Speaker 1: by quote a horse shaped demon, horsehead mask demon. Yeah.
Speaker 1: McDaniel also begins to discuss the the idea that if you,
Speaker 1: you know, if you look into another eye, you know,
Speaker 1: certainly with the right lighting and so forth, you look
Speaker 1: into another person's eye, you can see your own reflection.
Speaker 1: And so McDaniel mentions that, UH, in some traditions, that
Speaker 1: that individual you see in the eye is interpreted, you know,
Speaker 1: not as yourself, but as the signifier of the soul,
Speaker 1: and that there are even some tradition where if the
Speaker 1: individual looks in some way inverted, that is because of witchcraft.
Speaker 1: And in this uh, this this is one of those
Speaker 1: weird situations where then McDaniel mentioned something else that leads
Speaker 1: me back to a source that I'm I'm very familiar with,
Speaker 1: and yet I totally blinked on this particular detail or
Speaker 1: or or maybe I've never read this one particular tale,
Speaker 1: but he ends up referring back to Strange Tales from
Speaker 1: a Chinese studio by Poosh song Ling. That's a show, favorite, folks.
Speaker 1: Should we do we have a strange sales from a
Speaker 1: Chinese studio buzzer? I doubt we do, But at any rate,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a book that I really enjoy. This
Speaker 1: is a Ching Dynasty um collection of stories that Pouh
Speaker 1: song Ling collected and retails. And you know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot that's that's lost in translation um out of Mandarin,
Speaker 1: but but there's still remarkable fun sometimes funny, and sometimes
Speaker 1: just very strange. Uh. Sometimes it's it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's all about what they would have meant to the
Speaker 1: people who read them. But there are a lot of
Speaker 1: fun Uh. There's a Penguin edition of it translation that
Speaker 1: I've I read again and again over the years, and
Speaker 1: yet I completely blanked on this one story. It's called
Speaker 1: Talking Pupils. I think maybe the reason that I haven't
Speaker 1: read this one recently is sometimes i'll read these to
Speaker 1: my son and I'll sort of glance at them, and
Speaker 1: if it looks like there's something that might be scandalous
Speaker 1: in it, or you know, a little dirty, then I'll
Speaker 1: skip over the tale. There aren't many, but occasionally there's
Speaker 1: one like that. So anyway, this story Talking Pupils concerns
Speaker 1: the tale of one Feng Dong quote, a gentleman of
Speaker 1: considerable accomplishments while at the same time having a reputation
Speaker 1: as an unprincipled libertine. Oh yeah, so clearly that's why
Speaker 1: I might have skipped over this in recent years. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So Fang was this is how the story goes. Thing
Speaker 1: is strolling the countryside and he happens on a fine
Speaker 1: carriage on the road. Uh. One of the female attendants
Speaker 1: to the carriage is quite fetching, so he moves in
Speaker 1: for a closer look. But as he does so, he's
Speaker 1: able to peek between the curtains of the carriage itself
Speaker 1: and he sees a beautiful young woman within, and he's captivated.
Speaker 1: The female attendant is having none of this, though, and
Speaker 1: she verbally shames him. Uh, you know, call calls him
Speaker 1: a you know, a weirdo and um, you know, a
Speaker 1: snooper and uh, not only does she verbally shame him,
Speaker 1: she reaches down, grabs some dust out of the road
Speaker 1: and throws it in Fang's face. Oh, dirty fighter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know he had it coming. He was up
Speaker 1: to no good and he gets punished for it. So
Speaker 1: he's he's initially he's trying to get the dust out
Speaker 1: of his eyes. The carriage carries on. When he is
Speaker 1: able to see again, you know, struggling, the carriage is
Speaker 1: is completely done. It's you know, it's vanished around the
Speaker 1: bend or whatever. So he has heads on home, but
Speaker 1: his eyes continue to bother him, so he seeks some help.
Speaker 1: A friend looks into his eyes. Um, and this friend says, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a visible film over each of your eyeballs. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: tears won't stop flowing. In time, the film thickens and
Speaker 1: a birls. What what is described as a spiral shaped
Speaker 1: protuberance begins growing from his right eye, resisting all manner
Speaker 1: of treatment. Eventually he's completely blind, and you know, he's
Speaker 1: he's distraught over this. But he hears about a Buddhist
Speaker 1: sutra known as the Sutra of Light, and it's said
Speaker 1: to be able to heal eye ailments or ailments of
Speaker 1: this sort. So he gets a sided friend to read
Speaker 1: it to him, and he learns it by heart, and
Speaker 1: he recites it over and over again, and after a
Speaker 1: while it gives him solace. Uh, you know, he feels
Speaker 1: a little better. His side is not back. But then
Speaker 1: one day he begins to hear voices, two voices, one
Speaker 1: from each of his eyeballs. Oh, I love this. The
Speaker 1: eyeballs are talking, both of them. Well, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: not the eyeballs, but things within the eyeballs. There's one
Speaker 1: voice within each eyeball, and there they start talking to
Speaker 1: each other, and they're talking about how dark it is
Speaker 1: in their homes and how they'd really like to just
Speaker 1: get outside and go for a stroll. And then so
Speaker 1: puss on Ling says quote, then he felt a slight
Speaker 1: irritation in both the nostrils, as if two little creatures
Speaker 1: were wriggling down his nose. After a while, he felt
Speaker 1: the creatures return and make their way back up his nostrils.
Speaker 1: And into the eye sockets. Again, this is anatomically correct because,
Speaker 1: as we know, the tear ducks that drained tears away
Speaker 1: from the eyes drained into the nasal cavity, which is
Speaker 1: why your nose runs when you cry. Very good. So, uh,
Speaker 1: what does thing do at this point? Well, he gets
Speaker 1: his wife to take him to the old garden, and
Speaker 1: he has her observe him in the garden to see
Speaker 1: if anything like this happens again. Maybe the garden will
Speaker 1: coax whatever it is out of his eyeballs. And this
Speaker 1: is what happens. Quote, it was not long before she
Speaker 1: saw two little mannekins, neither of them any larger than
Speaker 1: a bean, emerged from his nose and fly buzzing out
Speaker 1: of the door. They were soon well out of sight.
Speaker 1: But we're back again in next to no time, flying
Speaker 1: together up onto his face and in at his nostrils,
Speaker 1: like a pair of homing bees or ants. So is
Speaker 1: he getting relief when they fly away? I don't think so. No,
Speaker 1: It's just it happens, and he doesn't know what this
Speaker 1: is about. So and it keeps happening. It happens again
Speaker 1: each day for three days, and finally one of the
Speaker 1: voices complains that the tunnel that they're using to get
Speaker 1: out of the eyeball is a bit round about, uh,
Speaker 1: and there's got to be a better way, right, It's
Speaker 1: time that they make some sort of proper doorway. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to read uh the rest of this year.
Speaker 1: That really gets to the juicy part. I'm just I'm
Speaker 1: filled with dread. It's not a good idea when the
Speaker 1: tenants in your eyeballs decided to start renovating on their own.
Speaker 1: So that's how it goes. The wall on my side
Speaker 1: is very thick, replied the right eye. It won't be easy.
Speaker 1: I'll try to make an opening on my side, said
Speaker 1: the left eye. Then we can share my door. Presently,
Speaker 1: Fay thought he felt a scratching and a splitting in
Speaker 1: his left eye socket, and an instant later he could
Speaker 1: see he could see everything around him with absolute clarity,
Speaker 1: beside himself with delight. He promptly informed his wife, who
Speaker 1: inspected his eyes afresh and found that in the left
Speaker 1: eye a minute aperture had appeared in the film, a
Speaker 1: hole no larger than a cracked peppercorn, through which gleamed
Speaker 1: the black globe of a pupil. By the next morning,
Speaker 1: the film in the left eye had disappeared altogether. But
Speaker 1: the strangest thing of all was that, on careful inspection,
Speaker 1: there were now two pupils visible in that eye, and
Speaker 1: the right eye was still obscured by its spiral shaped growth.
Speaker 1: Apparently both of the two eye mannekins his talking pupils
Speaker 1: had now taken up residence in the left eye. So
Speaker 1: although Fang was still blind in one eye, he could
Speaker 1: see better with his one good eye than he had
Speaker 1: ever done with two. From that day forth he was
Speaker 1: a great deal more circumspect in his behavior and acquired
Speaker 1: unimpeccable reputation in the district. Okay, so no more creeping
Speaker 1: on ladies and carriages. Right, he learned his uson. He
Speaker 1: was you know, punished for his creepy behavior, and now
Speaker 1: he's back and ready to be a good citizen with
Speaker 1: one eye that can see better than two, right, because
Speaker 1: two pupils um Now that this again is from the
Speaker 1: Penguin Classics edition. It's a John Minford translation, and this
Speaker 1: was super interesting as well. Minford shares this in the
Speaker 1: notes Pupils. The traditional Chinese expression for pupil, tong wren,
Speaker 1: means literally man in the pupil from the reflection of
Speaker 1: oneself that one sees in the eye of another. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was that was really that. I was really impressed
Speaker 1: by that. And I was talking to my wife about
Speaker 1: it because I was looking around a little bit after this,
Speaker 1: and I saw an article about photography and about being
Speaker 1: able to zoom in on the eye of an individual
Speaker 1: in a modern photograph and see the reflection potentially of
Speaker 1: the photographer and because of the high resolution, I guess, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh. I was asking my wife about this, and
Speaker 1: she pointed out that one the photographers can do is
Speaker 1: you can pull up, say a head shot that another
Speaker 1: photographer has done. You can zoom in on the eye
Speaker 1: and you can see what they're lighting set up is.
Speaker 1: So I was impressed by that as well. I'm impressed.
Speaker 1: That's a real James Bond level trick. I do not
Speaker 1: know what to make of the spiral growth though. Um.
Speaker 1: I looked around briefly on that, and I was not
Speaker 1: able to find any answers that seemed up convincing. I
Speaker 1: have no expertise on spiral growths from eyes than all right,
Speaker 1: I want to go back to Borsch for just a
Speaker 1: minute here, because she has a couple of other examples
Speaker 1: that she brings up. One apparently uh tolomeos chinos um Uh.
Speaker 1: This would have been a figure from the late first
Speaker 1: early second centuries. CE once described a beautiful woman as
Speaker 1: being quote with a double pupil. Okay. And in the
Speaker 1: last episode we we talked about some legends in which
Speaker 1: a cure or with multiple pupils that this was assumed
Speaker 1: to be a marker of beauty. Right. So this is
Speaker 1: interesting because it seems to suggest that this is not
Speaker 1: just isolated within Irish literary traditions, that perhaps somewhere else
Speaker 1: in the world there was this idea that double pupil
Speaker 1: equals beauty. Um. And and I mean, who am I
Speaker 1: to say it's it's not beautiful? Uh? You know, it's
Speaker 1: not like you look at images of of of actual
Speaker 1: double pupil situations and you're not hortified by them or anything,
Speaker 1: no more so than if you, you know, look at
Speaker 1: a super close up of of of any human eyeball.
Speaker 1: Borse also mentions that ovid portrays a woman with double
Speaker 1: pupils having the evil eye at one point, so uh,
Speaker 1: tying back into the evil eye tradition. But anyway, boris
Speaker 1: concludes quote to conclude this section. Both angry eyes and
Speaker 1: eyes with multiple pupils have been connected with the concept
Speaker 1: of the evil eye. There is no strict identity between
Speaker 1: the phenomena. Multiple pupils can also be a sign of beauty,
Speaker 1: sharp sight, and clair avoyance. Okay, so we're not really
Speaker 1: converging on a unity of theme here. It's if you're
Speaker 1: in an Irish legendar myth and you have a character
Speaker 1: with multiple pupils in one eye, it seems they could
Speaker 1: either be somebody who has a lot of insight, somebody
Speaker 1: who can see very far away, somebody who can see
Speaker 1: the future, somebody who is beautiful, or somebody who is
Speaker 1: monstrous or can do curses. And you know, there is
Speaker 1: this idea too that it's it's part of like the
Speaker 1: supernatural body, that when you have some sort of a
Speaker 1: demigod figure, it's the human body. Um, it's almost like
Speaker 1: it mutates with the divinity within it, like the like
Speaker 1: the the human The normal human body cannot contain this
Speaker 1: level of power, and therefore extra things are going to happen,
Speaker 1: you know, extra pupils, extra fingers, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And this ties directly into another example. I found, and
Speaker 1: this one comes from Chinese traditions as well. Uh. This
Speaker 1: is from the nine seven book Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy,
Speaker 1: Variations on a theme by Hungarian born French sinologists Eten
Speaker 1: Belahs working with working from another source as well, Essay
Speaker 1: on the Extinction of the Soul by Faun Shin, a
Speaker 1: Chinese philosopher and writer who lived UH four fifty through five.
Speaker 1: The subject here, as far as eyes are concerned, is
Speaker 1: one of the legendary sage rulers of antiquity in China.
Speaker 1: This would concern a time during the third millennium b c.
Speaker 1: And so the structure of this paper seems to concern
Speaker 1: like questions and answers. And so first we have this question.
Speaker 1: The body of the sage is similar to the body
Speaker 1: of ordinary men, Yet there is a difference by which
Speaker 1: the sage is distinguished from ordinary men. From this, it
Speaker 1: can be inferred that body and soul are different. Answer
Speaker 1: not at all. Pure gold glitters, and unwashed gold does not.
Speaker 1: Pure gold that glitters surely cannot be made of the
Speaker 1: same unglittering material as out of unwashed gold. How much
Speaker 1: less then, can the soul of a sage be lodged
Speaker 1: in a vessel such as the ordinary man, Nor would
Speaker 1: it be possible for the soul of an ordinary man
Speaker 1: to dwell in the body of a sage. Therefore, fang
Speaker 1: soon Is is depicted as having eyebrows of eight colors,
Speaker 1: and zong Huo's eyes with double pupils, Seyon as having
Speaker 1: the face of a dragon, and tie how the mouth
Speaker 1: of a horse, all of which are outward bodily signs
Speaker 1: of their exceptional nature. All the seven openings were found
Speaker 1: in the heart of pie Con. The gall bladder of
Speaker 1: Poe Yu was as big as a fist, which shows
Speaker 1: that their inner organs were unusual. Thus we know that
Speaker 1: certain parts of the bodies of sages are quite out
Speaker 1: of the ordinary, and that sages are not only superior
Speaker 1: to ordinary human beings, but also surpass all other creatures
Speaker 1: in bodily form. That's just science. I I love this
Speaker 1: passage so much. I mean, I love that it's basically
Speaker 1: an autopsy of of supernatural sages determining how they're they're
Speaker 1: But like you can imagine this scene in a movie.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this is beautiful. The gall bladder as big
Speaker 1: as a fist, showing that the inner organs are unusual.
Speaker 1: This is great, and you know, and this is not
Speaker 1: This is not a totally unique view of the body
Speaker 1: of the holy person or the saint. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: there are tons of traditions all around the world, including
Speaker 1: like the idea that that certain types of saints or
Speaker 1: holy people, because of their spiritual nature, their bodies would
Speaker 1: be found to be say, incorruptible, like they don't rot
Speaker 1: the way most spoties do. Yeah so, but Balas add
Speaker 1: some notes on this and points out that the legends
Speaker 1: about the eyebrows of eight colors, uh and the eyes
Speaker 1: with double pupils He's come from ma Han times and
Speaker 1: are contained in a number of different works. Uh So,
Speaker 1: yet another example of of of of exceptional eyes in
Speaker 1: the bodies of exceptional you know, heroic mythic individuals. Now,
Speaker 1: in the last episode, we talked a bit about human
Speaker 1: eye anatomy and some medical literature on polycoria, or the
Speaker 1: condition of having multiple pupils within the same eye. But
Speaker 1: I thought in this episode it would be a good
Speaker 1: idea to turn to pupils of the the animal kingdom
Speaker 1: more broadly, because uh, there's a lot we can learn
Speaker 1: about the function of pupils by looking at the pupils
Speaker 1: of non human animals, that's right. I mean, just consider
Speaker 1: the vast diversity we have in the animal world. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I mean even just dealing with the vertebrate world,
Speaker 1: it's pretty remarkable, not even getting into compound eyes of
Speaker 1: flies and so forth. But uh, consider humans. We have
Speaker 1: round pupils. House cats have vertical slits, tigers have round pupils,
Speaker 1: goats and horses horizontal. Dolphins have crescents, cuttlefish have w
Speaker 1: shaped pupils, some frogs have heart shaped pupils, and gets
Speaker 1: have these sort of what looked like pinholes arranged in
Speaker 1: a vertical line. I always love a good crocodile pupil. Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: tend to be rather vertical. Yeah, it's and it's also
Speaker 1: it's a window into the crocodile soul. But seeing all
Speaker 1: this different diversity does raise some questions because you think, okay, well,
Speaker 1: you know the bodies of animals are shaped by their environment.
Speaker 1: You know that that's what evolution does. It tends to
Speaker 1: give you the equipment that best helps you do whatever
Speaker 1: you need to do within your ecological niche. So why
Speaker 1: do different animals have different pupils. How how do differently
Speaker 1: shaped or sized pupils help an animal adapt to how
Speaker 1: it's supposed to survive in the world. Yeah. According to
Speaker 1: Martin Banks, a vision scientists at the University of California
Speaker 1: that cited in NPR story I, shapes of the animal
Speaker 1: world hint at differences in our lifestyles. Land animals of
Speaker 1: sufficient height tend to have round pupils. Thus you have
Speaker 1: big cats that have round pupils. Meanwhile your your small
Speaker 1: house cat cat has vertical pupils. Verticals are more the
Speaker 1: domain it seems, of smaller ambush predators, giving them an
Speaker 1: excellent ability at judging distances, which of course is going
Speaker 1: to be super important when you're bouncing out of the
Speaker 1: shadows and trying to um, you know, capture like a
Speaker 1: small rodent or your owner's foot. Horizontal pupils, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, are widely understood as a means of keeping
Speaker 1: a wider swath of the surroundings in sight while you're
Speaker 1: grazing um and you know, an expanded field of view.
Speaker 1: So you can think of this, is that the panoramic
Speaker 1: potential prey view of the world. Right, So I was
Speaker 1: actually looking into this, Uh, the paper that Banks is
Speaker 1: connected with is one that was published in in Science Advances,
Speaker 1: and it's by Martin Banks, William Sprague, You're going small,
Speaker 1: Jared Parnell, and Gordon Love, and it's called why do
Speaker 1: animal ize have pupils of different shapes? And what you
Speaker 1: say is correct? They looked in this question and they found, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are some very strong correlations between how an animals
Speaker 1: survives and what shape its pupils are, at least among
Speaker 1: land vertebrates. And so you tend to have, like you're saying,
Speaker 1: horizontal pupils if you are a herbivore, whereas ambush predators
Speaker 1: predators that sit around and wait for their prey, they
Speaker 1: tend to have vertical slits, especially if they're active in
Speaker 1: both daytime and nighttime. And meanwhile, active predators, predators that
Speaker 1: hunt and chase down their prey instead of sitting and waiting,
Speaker 1: they are more likely to have round or circular pupils.
Speaker 1: And this is not a coincidence. The author has found
Speaker 1: some pretty good reasons why the pupils would be allotted
Speaker 1: in these ways. So first of all, you would have
Speaker 1: to wonder how does it work this lay way, Like
Speaker 1: why would vertical pupils be useful if you were an
Speaker 1: ambush predator, especially as you were saying, an ambush predator
Speaker 1: of low height, because height matters. So if you're you're
Speaker 1: an active predator chasing down prey, you likely have round pupils,
Speaker 1: or if you're an ambush predator that is taller, you
Speaker 1: probably have round pupils. Vertical slits of what you're really
Speaker 1: likely to see if you're a sit and wait, jump
Speaker 1: out predator and you're close to the ground. So I
Speaker 1: want to read a section from this paper, and there's
Speaker 1: a couple of bits of terminology. To understand the quote
Speaker 1: I'm about to read, it'll use the term stereopsis. Stereopsis
Speaker 1: is depth perception that is created by comparing the difference
Speaker 1: between what is seen by two different eyes focusing on
Speaker 1: the same image. So we use stereopsis to uh to
Speaker 1: judge depth when we when we look at an image
Speaker 1: by the brain says, okay, we've got two different data
Speaker 1: points of the eyes, and it compares them together and
Speaker 1: gives you this three D image with depth. But then
Speaker 1: the other term is defocus blur. This refers to the
Speaker 1: blurry nous and objects that are either close or farther away,
Speaker 1: closer farther away than you're focusing. So the authors of
Speaker 1: this paper right quote, vertically elongated pupils create a stigmatic
Speaker 1: depth of field, such that images of vertical contours nearer
Speaker 1: or farther than the distance to which the eyes focused
Speaker 1: are sharp, whereas images of horizontal contours at different distances
Speaker 1: are blurred. This is advantageous for ambush predators to use
Speaker 1: stereopsis to estimate distances of vertical contours and defocus blur
Speaker 1: to estimate distances of horizontal contours. So, rob, if you'll
Speaker 1: scroll down a bit in the notes here, I attached
Speaker 1: a picture that they put in the paper to simulate
Speaker 1: what it looks like to a creature that's gazing out
Speaker 1: at the world with vertical slit pupils. Uh. And it's
Speaker 1: a very interesting So they've they've got a picture with
Speaker 1: a toy bird sitting on the ground, presumably a foot
Speaker 1: or two ahead of where the camera is positioned, and
Speaker 1: then there's some objects in the foreground in and the background.
Speaker 1: And what you'll notice about this picture is that, um,
Speaker 1: the bird is very much in tight focus, but then
Speaker 1: for objects around it there is there is an uneven
Speaker 1: amount of blurry nous in the vertical and horizontal directions.
Speaker 1: So like there's a plant stalk that's poking right up
Speaker 1: in the foreground, and its shape is fairly in focus
Speaker 1: when you're looking at it height wise, you know, like
Speaker 1: the stalk is is sort of sort of blurry but
Speaker 1: sort of in focus. But things in the horizontal direction,
Speaker 1: like the the top of the pot that the plant
Speaker 1: is sitting in, are very blurry. And apparently it allows
Speaker 1: these animals to use both the the stereopsis, the comparing
Speaker 1: the two different eyes if the animal has two front
Speaker 1: facing eyes, and the way that images are blurred when
Speaker 1: they're at different levels of distance from the object in
Speaker 1: focus to judge depth very well, so you can really
Speaker 1: nail that bird when you jump. So sorry if that
Speaker 1: was a little complicated, but it took me a while
Speaker 1: to understand. I was trying to figure out, like why
Speaker 1: the vertical slits actually help with the hunting, But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it makes sense if you especially if you
Speaker 1: look up the picture, you can say like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: this is yeah, this is for an animal that is
Speaker 1: precisely trying to target a jump at something and you've
Speaker 1: got one shot pulling it off. But there was another
Speaker 1: thing noted in this paper that I thought was really interesting,
Speaker 1: and this was actually just in the introduction, but it
Speaker 1: was about advantages of slit shaped pupils over round ones
Speaker 1: in general. So we were just talking about vertical pupils
Speaker 1: for for a load of the ground ambush predators, but
Speaker 1: slit pupils in general can be advantageous because they allow
Speaker 1: for much greater changes in the area of the pupil
Speaker 1: and thus greater variation in the light conditions they can
Speaker 1: adapt to. So you've got a human pupil. Just to
Speaker 1: constrict a round human pupil like ours, you need that
Speaker 1: ring shaped sphincter muscle that we talked about at h
Speaker 1: in the last episode. But to close a slit pupil
Speaker 1: uses two muscles that close the sides of the slit together.
Speaker 1: And as a result of these morphological differences there there
Speaker 1: is a different amount that you can increase or or
Speaker 1: decrease the the area of the pupil and in the
Speaker 1: amount of light that it can pull in. So, to
Speaker 1: read from the paper quote, the vertical slit pupils of
Speaker 1: the domestic cat and geck undergo area changes of a
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty five and three hundred fold, respectively, whereas
Speaker 1: human circular pupil changes by about fifteen fold. Species. Yeah,
Speaker 1: species that are active in night and day need to
Speaker 1: dilate sufficiently under dim conditions while constricting enough to prevent
Speaker 1: dazzle in daylight. So a slit pupil provides the required
Speaker 1: dynamic range. So this is why a slit pupil is good.
Speaker 1: It's great for high dynamic range for an eye that
Speaker 1: works great in both bright daylight and in pitched arc
Speaker 1: And you know, I can't help but think with smaller
Speaker 1: predators as well. I mean, these are generally going to
Speaker 1: be creatures that are not only predator but prey as well.
Speaker 1: So it's not like they can just hold up, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, all day. I mean, they may try to
Speaker 1: hold up all day, but they might need to play
Speaker 1: the survival game during daylight as well, assuming they're not
Speaker 1: actively hunting during the day as well of course, right right, So,
Speaker 1: so yes, a slit pupil is great for for being
Speaker 1: highly adaptable to whatever the light situation is. But the
Speaker 1: directional orientation of the slit depends more on your ecological
Speaker 1: niche like you were talking about earlier. So again, yeah,
Speaker 1: the grazing herbivores like horses, they will have horizontal slits
Speaker 1: to help them keep a panoramic view of the environment
Speaker 1: and watch for movement or predators approaching. But another interesting
Speaker 1: finding of the authors here, these pupil orientations for herbivores
Speaker 1: only work if the animal keeps the pupil parallel to
Speaker 1: the horizon, and grazing herbivores actually spend much of their
Speaker 1: time with their heads bent down to the ground eating grass.
Speaker 1: So what gives there? Well, the researchers looked into this
Speaker 1: and they found that, in fact, when horses been down
Speaker 1: to graze, they rotate their eyes within the sockets to
Speaker 1: keep the pupils parallel to the horizon. And Martin Banks
Speaker 1: in that NPR article he gives a quote pointing out
Speaker 1: that this is weird because the eyes have to rotate
Speaker 1: in opposite directions, you know, think about the eyes on
Speaker 1: opposite sides. Uh. And apparently they couldn't find any references
Speaker 1: to anybody ever writing about this before, which is funny
Speaker 1: given how much time people spend around horses. But yeah, so,
Speaker 1: so that's what horses do when they've been down to
Speaker 1: the grass. Their eyes swivel in the sockets to maintain
Speaker 1: the pupil slit as parallel to the horizon. Wow, this
Speaker 1: is another one of the and I I know we've we've
Speaker 1: talked about this before, and you know, imagining uh, alien
Speaker 1: life forms and so forth, but also getting intigenous ideas
Speaker 1: of consciousness, like how much of our our understanding of
Speaker 1: ourselves in the world seems to come down to to
Speaker 1: how we view the world and how we focus attention,
Speaker 1: um and uh. And you have to try and put
Speaker 1: yourself in the mindset of of a mind that is
Speaker 1: that that perceives the world in this manner that you know,
Speaker 1: that that has eyes that are always focused on the
Speaker 1: horizon in order to get this panoramic view of of
Speaker 1: all the potential threats that could be interfering with they're feeding.
Speaker 1: One less funny note that was in that NPR coverage
Speaker 1: of this paper was about depictions of dinosaurs in Jurassic
Speaker 1: World and other movies. So you know, you've got this
Speaker 1: some kind of giga predator dinosaur. It's just like the
Speaker 1: ultimate what do they call it? In Jurassic World. It
Speaker 1: was like the Killer Rex or so this is the
Speaker 1: this is the Hannibal electro one Killamus maximus yeah, something
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, well, they talk about the temptation to
Speaker 1: depict predators like this with with vertical slits for eyes,
Speaker 1: because I think we correctly detect that as a predatory.
Speaker 1: You look at the crocodile's eyes, it's got these creepy
Speaker 1: vertical slits, and that makes sense because the crocodile is
Speaker 1: an ambush predator that operates low to the ground. But
Speaker 1: they say, actually, uh this, you know, the the Kilumus
Speaker 1: maximus dinosaur is an active predator and it's very tall,
Speaker 1: so it would probably have round pupils like ours. And
Speaker 1: the funny thing is, you can't even use the frog excuse,
Speaker 1: like oftentimes that is used to excuse sort of stuck
Speaker 1: in the mud depictions of dinosaurs and the Drassic Park
Speaker 1: traffic Jurassic World movies. They'll say, well, you have to
Speaker 1: remember they also used frog DNA, So the fact that
Speaker 1: they don't have feathers that has to do with the
Speaker 1: frog DNA. But if it was the frog DNA, and
Speaker 1: perhaps they would all have heart shaped pupils depending on
Speaker 1: the type of frogs that we used, right, Yeah, And
Speaker 1: that brings us back to the next thing, which is,
Speaker 1: so we were talking about the orientations of slit shaped
Speaker 1: pupils versus round pupils in terrestrial vertebrates. But when you
Speaker 1: start looking at the eyes, there are the pupils of
Speaker 1: animals that live in the water. He starts. Even weird shapes,
Speaker 1: and dolphins and cuttle fish and all kinds of things
Speaker 1: have these strangely shaped pupils. Yeah. The cuttlefish pupil especially
Speaker 1: is very fascinating to look at. Definitely look up a
Speaker 1: picture of it if you're you're not picturing it right now.
Speaker 1: It looks like this wavy W. It looks kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, the face on the Pringles can is that
Speaker 1: Mr Pringles, Dr Pringles, I can't remember, Doctor Pringles man,
Speaker 1: which is that Governor Pringle's Governor Pringles, Senator Pringles, Yes Pringles.
Speaker 1: He has a mustache and um under under certain light conditions.
Speaker 1: The cuttlefish I looks like that mustache in my opinion.
Speaker 1: But the interesting thing is that, yes it has. The
Speaker 1: cuttlefish I has this signature W shape in bright light,
Speaker 1: but it's actually circular in low light. Um. According to
Speaker 1: the W shaped pupil in cuttlefish by a math at
Speaker 1: All published in Vision re Search in the two main
Speaker 1: theories um were that the shape is either for camouflage,
Speaker 1: so it's just it has a weird pupil because it's
Speaker 1: doing all sorts of strange things with its chromatic force
Speaker 1: to you know, to change its UH its appearance, and
Speaker 1: therefore it has you know, strange things going on in
Speaker 1: his high as well, or that it has to do
Speaker 1: with distance calculations. It's coming down to some of the
Speaker 1: same UH factors that that we just discussed in terms
Speaker 1: of vertical um in horizontal pupils. But in this case,
Speaker 1: the researchers proposed that the W shaped pupil might aid
Speaker 1: in balancing out the vertically uneven light field of its
Speaker 1: natural habitat. So here's a quote from from that paper. Quote.
Speaker 1: While an animal's retina can deal with a wide range
Speaker 1: of light intensities in one scene, reducing this range would
Speaker 1: limit the need for rapid local adaptation during vertical gaze shifts.
Speaker 1: Since cuttlefish do not have an instant three sixty field
Speaker 1: of view, they must rely on gaze shifts to provide
Speaker 1: them with the complete view of the surrounding world. Okay,
Speaker 1: so they have to move their eyes to look around them, right,
Speaker 1: and you know, in this, we have to think about
Speaker 1: light in the aquatic world, you know, where you know,
Speaker 1: the the ever present darkness of the depths and then
Speaker 1: the periodic light field realm of the the the upper depth.
Speaker 1: And if you're something like cuttlefish, you're having to navigate both.
Speaker 1: And it kind of comes down to some of the
Speaker 1: ideas we're discussing with with with load of the ground predators.
Speaker 1: You know, you have to sort of be a be
Speaker 1: adaptable to both realms, but in this case, you need
Speaker 1: to be able to uh to simultaneously deal with the
Speaker 1: light in the darkness by the way, coming out of
Speaker 1: the water for a second, the gecko pupil I was
Speaker 1: reading about essentially as a vertical pupil aiding in a
Speaker 1: nocturnal ambush predators lifestyle. But it does look really cool
Speaker 1: and they are apparently really incredible hunting eyes according to
Speaker 1: some of the articles that I looked at um. But
Speaker 1: then oh, another aquatic eye of note is the dolphin
Speaker 1: pupil um and it's it's interesting that while it resembles
Speaker 1: a horseshoe or crescent, when it's fully dilated, it constricts
Speaker 1: down to two tiny openings uh that are sometimes referred
Speaker 1: to as a double pupil um. And this apparently comes
Speaker 1: down to the fact that the the the pupil shape
Speaker 1: with dolphins has to do with dolphins or noted for
Speaker 1: having exceptional vision both in and out of the water. Uh,
Speaker 1: they know, they're they're they're they're able to position their
Speaker 1: bodies so that they're gazing out of the water and
Speaker 1: they have great vision in that circumstance as well. But
Speaker 1: I included a photograph here for you, Joe, and I
Speaker 1: encourage listeners to look this up as well. Um, the
Speaker 1: first picture shows the horseshoe pupil, and then the second
Speaker 1: picture shows the double pupil when everything is fully constricted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does look amazing though, if you do look up
Speaker 1: scientific diagrams of the eye. I think what these are
Speaker 1: explaining that's normally happening is like that the the sort
Speaker 1: of horseshoe or or you shaped people when it constricts.
Speaker 1: What it actually constricts down to is something that looks
Speaker 1: kind of like two earbuds connected by a wire and
Speaker 1: the wire is just very narrow. Yes. Yes, now some
Speaker 1: of you might be wondering, Okay, you're talking about mythic
Speaker 1: figures with strange eyes. And now we've we've talked about
Speaker 1: a number of different real life organisms that have some
Speaker 1: sort of interesting eyes going on. Uh. Is it possible
Speaker 1: that that that the myth makers and the storytellers of
Speaker 1: old were inspired by eyes they saw in nature? And
Speaker 1: I didn't really find anybody talking about this, I mean
Speaker 1: outside of Yes, if you're watching some sort of modern
Speaker 1: show and reptile people show up and they have vertical
Speaker 1: slits and their eyeballs, yes, obviously somebody decided let's give
Speaker 1: them reptile eyes. Um. So again, if they're reptile people,
Speaker 1: I mean, if they're like, I don't know, five six
Speaker 1: ft tall or something, the should probably have round eyes.
Speaker 1: What if they what if they crawl around on their
Speaker 1: bellies all the time that's how they hunt? Okay, then
Speaker 1: then yeah, vertical slits, go for it. But I was thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: the cuttlefish has this amazing looking I um, any possibility there? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean the common or European cuttlefish can be found
Speaker 1: in Irish waters, and cuttle fish shells or cuttlefish bones
Speaker 1: were used as ornaments um by the Celts. According to D. J.
Speaker 1: Conway in the book Celtic Magic, Ireland However, it's famously
Speaker 1: led on reptile species, so I don't think gecks would
Speaker 1: have had an impact on any literary motifs. And and ultimately,
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody was pulling up any cuttle fish
Speaker 1: and and checking out their their eyeballs either or you know,
Speaker 1: I've I found nothing to suggest that, but my mind
Speaker 1: went there, so I thought i'd mentioned it to everybody.
Speaker 1: You know, I think this show is a safe place
Speaker 1: to admit research dead ends. Sometimes we just got to
Speaker 1: do that. Yeah, unless there's a paper out there I'm
Speaker 1: missing and if so, as always, if there's something we've missed,
Speaker 1: right in and let us know, we would love to
Speaker 1: be corrected. Well, should we tighten the sphincter constrict the
Speaker 1: pupil on this one? That's right, Uh, that's what what's
Speaker 1: what we should do. We should limit the light coming
Speaker 1: in at this point. Um, But we'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from everyone out there. If there are particular mythic figures,
Speaker 1: literary figures, pop culture examples of of multi pupil, multi irist,
Speaker 1: multi lobed eyes right in and let us know about them.
Speaker 1: Send some pictures if if they exist. We would love
Speaker 1: to hear from you. Likewise, if there are other you know,
Speaker 1: we we really only spend a little bit of time
Speaker 1: here with the animal world. Uh, there's so many fascinating
Speaker 1: animal eyes out there, So if there are examples that
Speaker 1: you're particularly fond of, right in, let us know. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then of course there are other areas of this
Speaker 1: that we've just touched on in these two episodes that
Speaker 1: we could easily come back and discuss more about, like oh,
Speaker 1: the evil Eye as we were discussing like that could
Speaker 1: be its own deep dive on the show, no doubt.
Speaker 1: All right. In the meantime, if you would like to
Speaker 1: check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: it publishes every Tuesday and Thursday, core episodes. In the
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed, we have listener
Speaker 1: mail episodes on Monday, short form Artifact or Monster Fact
Speaker 1: episodes on Wednesday, and on Friday, we do Weird How Cinema.
Speaker 1: That's our time to set aside most serious concerns and
Speaker 1: just talk about a strange motion picture. Huge thanks as
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other to suggest a
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hello. You
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind's production of
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