Cooperative eye hypothesis Cooperative eye hypothesis The cooperative eye hypothesis is a proposed explanation for the appearance of the human eye. It suggests that the eye's distinctive visible characteristics evolved to make it easier for humans to follow another's gaze while communicating or while working together on tasks. Unlike other primates, human beings have eyes with a distinct colour contrast between the white sclera, the coloured iris, and the black pupil. This is due to a lack of pigment in the sclera. Other primates have pigmented sclerae that are brown or dark in colour. There is also a higher contrast between human skin,
Arthropod eye curved surface. Later designs used graduating lens sizes. The third eye morphology of trilobites, called the abathochroal, was found only within the Eodiscina. This morphology consisted of up to 70 much smaller lenses. The cornea separated each lens, and the sclera on each lens terminated on top of each cornea. The eye morphology of trilobites is useful for determining their mode of life, and can function as palaeoenvironmental indicators. The horseshoe crab has traditionally been used in investigations into the eye, because it has relatively large ommatidia with large nerve fibres (making them easy to experiment on). It also falls