What is your eye shape? Are your eyes deep set, monolids, hooded, protruding, upturned, down-turned, close set or wide set? A careful look in the ‘Snow white’ mirror will guide you into the right answer. So much rotates around the eyes such as the ‘beauty of a person’ and their goodness – have you heard of a person having a bad eye? Our language too is riddled with eye statements like; ‘ Her look was pregnant with meaning!’ or ‘Eyes are the windows to the soul!’ Also, people claim that they can read people’s eyes, how they do this beats my understanding!

With such a wide range of shapes and sizes that the human eye comes in, it is extremely sad that these beautiful and precious organs may cease to function totally or partially at one point. But the great news is that there is hope. This hope comes in the shape of the bionic eye.

Bionic eye, is a camera like prosthesis that enables a person who has lost their sight to see! A small camera is attached near the eye (it could be at the side or at the forehead) and this sends flash like signals to the brain that it receives from very small electrodes that are surgically placed along the optic nerve. The messages that the brain gets are in form of quick flashes that it sorts out. Aspects that are perceived are like shape and distance of objects, but not color as yet. Research suggests that these bionic eyes will keep improving the range of things they can see as well as the focus on them, making the vision sharper and overall better!

Clearly there is hope for those without sight! But there is a catch too. For you to use this bionic eye, you must have had sight at one point and lost it due to different eye conditions or because they have grown old.

Whereas people have varying eye shapes, animals differ in pupil shape. Their pupils are generally , vertical, horizontal or round. The shape of the pupil is determined by what you do for a living. If your job is to lie in the bush and await to surprise attack your dinner, then vertical pupils are yours because you need to accurately judge the best angle of attack! If you are an animal that needs to look out for enemies constantly lest they get you, then your eyes are on the side of your head, rotating around, always on the alert!

So why are our eyes at the front?

Lois Nakibuuka is an educator and counsellor