All Your Tuataras Are Belong To Us

Has anyone seen this story yet, about the baby tuataras found at the Kaori Wildlife Sanctuary in New Zealand? I think this is fantastic news, it means that tuataras might, just might, rebound from their past losses and be around in our future for our children and grandchildren to see. And they should be around for our children because tuataras are, quite frankly, fascinating creatures. They evolve faster than any other creature at the molecular level. They can live for over a century, and still be sexually potent. Not to mention they are the last of the sphenodontians, an ancient group of reptiles that look the place of lizards through much of the Mesozoic.

Tuataras have another features that makes them even stranger; a third, or parietal, eye in the center of their forehead. If one was to look at the head of a baby tuatara, there would be a third black eye centered in between the other two in the middle of their head. Really. And this eye isn't just a freak mutation or a non-functioning part, it can actually sense light and ultraviolet radiation. However, as the tuatara ages, the eye receeds into the head, and becomes covered in flesh and bone. In fact, all tetrapods have a third eye, even humans, but we lose ours inside the embryo. Our parietal eye goes deep inside our body, where it becomes our pineal gland.

But more to the point, think of the evolutionary potential of an animal with a third eye. In one of my favorite television shows, Doctor Who, there was a race called the Silurians (more appropriately termed the Eocenes) that had evolved on Earth long before humans and practically screamed sphenodontian, with a large third eye in the middle of the forehead (see picture above). While the powers possessed by the third eye were not exactly plausible, shooting neural lazers which could open doors and stun or kill people (but it was still good television), it does seriously open the possibilities of what could an animal do with a third eye. For example, animals living in the trees or having predatory behaviors tend to develop binocular vision. Well what about trinocular vision. The possibilities are endless, and rather unexplored.