How did eyes evolve?
CrowdScience
BBC
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 17 September 2021
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Look into my eyes. What do you see? Pupil, lens, retina… an intricate set of special tissues and mechanisms all working seamlessly together, so that I can see the world around me. Charles Darwin called the eye an ‘organ of extreme perfection’ and he’s not wrong!
But if the eye is so complex and intricate, how did it evolve? One listener, Aloyce from Tanzania, got in touch to pose this difficult question. It’s a question that taxed Darwin himself, but CrowdScience is always up for a challenge!
The problem is that eyes weren’t ever designed - they were cobbled together over millions and millions of years, formed gradually by the tweaks and adaptations of evolution. How do you get from the basic detection of light to the wonderful complexity - and diversity – of visual systems we find throughout the animal kingdom?
CrowdScience sent Marnie Chesterton on an 800 million year journey to trace how the different elements that make up the human eye gradually came into being; from the emergence of the first light-sensitive proteins to crude eye-cups, from deep sea creatures with simple pinhole eyes to the first light-focusing lenses, all the way to the technicolour detail of the present day.
Produced by Ilan Goodman for the BBC World Service.
With contributions from: Dr Adam Rutherford, Dr Megan Porter, Professor Dan Nilsson, Dr Samantha Strong
(Photo Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of |
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| 0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
| 0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
| 0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
| 0:25.5 | calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:42.8 | Ee, upside down. Oh, yes, they're definitely working. I think it's, if you take, if you took it to a window, you'd be like, well, Right, let's take it to a window. |
| 0:45.3 | Let's go and see what we can do with a window. |
| 0:47.8 | Hello and welcome to Crowd Science from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:51.2 | I'm Marnie Chesterton. You're joining as a few of us try out a |
| 0:55.0 | freshly made eye. Surprisingly, it's constructed out of cardboard, sticky tape and |
| 1:00.9 | some baking paper. Less surprisingly, it's a really basic version of the biological variety that sit in our faces. |
| 1:08.0 | But I'm hoping that the crude model will help me to understand how these ingenious organs work and I'm not |
| 1:14.8 | the only one marvelling. Crowd science episodes are powered by listeners questions and |
| 1:19.5 | over in Tanzania this week's questioner is wondering how such a complex and sensitive organ |
| 1:26.2 | could have sprung up through the random messy process of evolution. |
| 1:31.2 | Hello, Cloud solution. |
| 1:36.0 | Hello, Cloud Science. My name is Alois Mahalegai and I am Fromanza in Tanzania. |
| 1:40.0 | I am wondering how eyes came to be eyes eyes |
| 1:45.0 | eyes are surprising and interesting to me because I think they are very complex. |
| 1:51.0 | How did that complex come to be? How did they evolve? Although I have the |
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