Why is the sclera white
Wildlife Wednesday: What's a Sclera?
[Music]
you
whoa that's a little bit spooky isn't it
yeah those eyes kind of creep people out
sometimes hi i'm jerry ellis and welcome
to wildlife wednesday on apes like us
yeah i was editing over the weekend and
I bumped into a bunch of images and I
thought this would make a great Wildlife
Wednesday those eyes are the eyes of a
chimpanzee even though they look
frightening ly like us you'd almost
think this was maybe an early 2018
Halloween special but no those are
chimpanzee eyes from one of the
sanctuaries that I was working at and in
Africa and what I wanted to talk about
this week was that white part around
your eyes you know humans have much more
white than almost any other primate on
the planet in fact we're dominated by
white and there's a reason for that the
white around your eyes that well I hope
it's white it was just new years ago old
days ago so who knows what color that
thing is but anyway that white around
your eyes is called the sclera the
sclera is the white portion of your eye
it actually wraps all the way around
your eyeball to the very back of it
it's made from callaghan which is the
most well it's like the most numerous
protein in your entire body
it adds elasticity to everything you do
it's in your tendons it's in your
muscles and it adds elasticity to your
eye well we're not really sure a hundred
percent why we have more white than any
other primate on the planet especially
any other ape but we think it's because
humans use their eyes to communicate in
a very different way than most other
apes do like if you look at a gorilla
chimps bonobos any of the others their
pupils and irises seem to dominate their
eyes so they actually do have white
sclera but you just can't see it in fact
there was a study done and I'll put a
link to that down in the in the show
more section there was a study done
where they looked at the amount of
sclera that's white in a gorillas eye
and a human's eye and they found it was
almost the same except for because our
eyes are elongated more of that white
shows and that's why for example if you
have a pet dog if you're standing there
talking to your dog and you're looking
around at the dog the dogs following
your eyes the whole time well we use our
eyes to communique
like that where apes don't really want
you looking at their eyes they want to
conceal what they're looking at in fact
the worst thing you could do is you
stare right into the face of a gorilla
for example and this is the reaction
you're going to get so don't do that
don't stare into the face of a gorilla
or a chimp or you know any other ape
anyway that's your scelera you probably
never knew where it was and now you can
use it for trivia and fool all your
friends anyway that's this week on
wildlife Wednesday I'm Gerry Ellis for
everybody at Apes like us we'll see you
next Wednesday
you
