‘Shema, get on with your work! Nunu, no you may not sit with Asiimwe, go back to your seat please!’ All this is said while the teacher is facing the board and writing on it. Do teachers have eyes at the back of their heads, you must have wondered too as your teacher seemed to know what you and everyone else was doing all the time in class. Right?

Eyes have for so long fascinated the world. It is no wonder that sayings like: "She has a third eye or African eyes are in their hands among so many others are quite often heard. My best is; "Eyes are the windows to the soul!”

Still others claim that ‘Eyes can speak!” That they can read people’s eyes to find out what they are feeling or thinking. Can you?

In last week’s article, the question was, "Why are the eyes of human beings placed at the front of the face forward?” According to Jason Goldman, as the eyes move forward along the face, two fields of vision overlap. It’s that overlap – the slightly different perspective on the scene in front of you that each of your two eyes sends to your brain – that allows you to perceive depth.” That way you can confidently gauge what energy you need as you take steps when you are walking or doing anything else. Spectacle wearers can attest to this when they get new glasses; because the vision is still adjusting to the new lenses, one may misjudge the distance from where they are to the floor and miss a step.

Other vision experts assert that it is because forward looking eyes have the capacity to see like a binocular – you zoom in and out, focusing on far away things and those that are nearby. I think it is for beauty purposes. Can you imagine if our eyes were at the side, how would we look like?

Some of our relatives that have forward looking eyes are monkeys, wolves, tigers,and owls.

Whatever location, shape or type of eye, animal eyes have contributed a lot in understanding the human eye and its conditions as well as diseases. Research has been done on many different eyes for instance, because sharks have corneas that are almost the same as ours, they have been put into human eyes during operations – talk about shark-like vision!

Lois Nakibuukais an educator and counsellorlnakibuuka@yahoo.com