There's something I've noticed, although I'm sure I'm not the first. This is a closeup of a dog's eye.
Notice that the dog's eye is very similar to a human eye. Larger iris and less white, but the elements are all the same. The cat's eye is something else again. A field of color too big to even be called an iris, really, and a vertically elongated pupil.
There are dog people and cat people, of course. But regardless of which, if either, they prefer, people tend to be familiar with dogs. They're more intimidated by cats. I wonder if the stranger albeit beautiful eyes have something to do with that.
It's also weird that they diverge like that. They are, of course, more related to each other than to us. (Fun fact: we're in the same superorder as rats and bunnies.) It would make a great story to say that dogs have evolved to look more like us in the longer time that they've been domesticated. But wolves have human-ish eyes as well, so that's not really it.
2 comments:
Ah yes, that similarity to people's eyes is a trick dogs developed to get us to pat them and give them biscuits and belly rubs. 'Of course you can trust me because I look like your best friend in the whole world.' Which naturally is exactly what a dog will be for you.
Cats on the other hand look alien largely because of their slitty eyes. Cats put up with us when they're in a mood to do so and sometimes they might even offer some signs of affection. They demand food rather than beg for it and if you don't feed them what they like they're likely to go out and kill something and leave partial remains on your pillow.
That's funny that we're related to rats and bunnies. To think how upset the Victorians were to hear they descended from apes it's not hard to imagine how they'd react to the superorder.
It's good to know the difference between a dog and a wolf
- the eyes aren't nearly so appealing.
Funny, innit. On one level dogs have evolved to mesh socially with humans. And there is natural selection involved. The consequences for a dog that's maladaptive in human society can be quite severe. And yet their affection is genuine, not coerced.
Cat's eyes are somewhat similar to snake eyes. That may be because of the similarities in their natural prey and hunting styles, although obviously snakes don't have claws. Cats haven't been domesticated nearly as long, either. When you bring a cat into your home it's somewhat alien (although I can kind of identify with them.) Doesn't stop them from being adorable, though.
The superorder eoarchontoglires, which is quite a mouthful. People haven't stopped being uncomfortable about being part of the animal kingdom since the Victorian Era, or at least not all have. Nothing wrong with coming from somewhere, I say.
Wolf's eyes do have a similar structure, though. It's just they're looking at/for different things.
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