00:00Our eyes are how we take in most of the world around us, but for one creature in the animal
00:08kingdom, its evolutionary path has literally put all of its survival eggs into optics.
00:14This is a close-up image of the Alseopid polychaete worm.
00:17Experts say its eyes weigh 20 times the weight of the rest of its head, or what Science Alert
00:22reports would be about the same if our human eyes weighed around 110 pounds each.
00:27The wildest thing is that the worms feed in the middle of the night, at the bottom
00:31of the ocean, meaning experts really didn't understand why they would need such big eyes.
00:35But now we might finally have an idea.
00:37A new study discovered that this particular marine worm is able to not only see small
00:41and distant objects, but also track them.
00:43This is sort of a huge find considering previously only vertebrates, arthropods, and cephalopods
00:49were believed to have the ability to do so.
00:51Most other worms only have extremely low-resolution basic vision or direction photoreception,
00:56which is essentially just being able to track the direction light is coming from.
00:59The researchers concluded that this extremely small, almost transparent worm has eyesight
01:04that is essentially on par with mice or rats.
01:07Previous studies have concluded that their eyes are also able to pick up ultraviolet
01:10wavelengths particularly well, meaning these deep-sea worms might still be hiding some
01:14tricks up their ocular sleeves.
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