Jesse Rogerson

So way back hundreds of millions of years ago,

gooping around in the ocean.

There was a common ancestor of ours and many other animals that likely had the midline one right in the middle because they developed a lifestyle that was very sedentary.

They were burrowing in the sand and they wanted to just stay in one spot.

They were filter feeders.

Meaning they could just sit where they are, filter the water around them, and that's all they needed to do.

They didn't need to crawl around or chase food or anything.

There's a million, yeah.

Lots of ways to get energy out of the water.

So the really only light-sensitive thing that you need is something right on the top of your head that can tell you when it's day or night.

and can tell you up or down.

Those are useful things.

But you don't need anything to coordinate movement, which is what two eyes do, right?

Then, somewhere between 600 million years ago and 400 million years ago, this common ancestor of ours then decided it – or didn't decide.

It evolved to start being more – needed more coordinated movement.

And so the one thing on the top of the head developed eyelids that made it point in two different directions.

And then over time, because evolutionary biology is amazing, those that –

That eye on the top of the head, which was kind of split in half, slowly moves to the side of the head because the more on the side of the head or the more on the front, the better your coordination and the brain built in between it.

And the connection between the eyes and the brain and how we manage our sleep was all built through that.

So it is a really interesting study to look at where our weird eyes come from.