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"Humans have the thickest eyelids in the animal kingdom."
Now, one would THINK eyelid thickness would be proportional to the size of the animal, or prehaps to the climate to which is resides. One would assume, say, an elephant would have thicker eyelids than humans, due to size and the sometimes dusty environment.
I know Gullible.info does a whole lot of reasearch, so I'd just like some clarification on this one.
You'd think that would be true, but that's what makes it such an interesting fact.
An elephant's eyelids are just slightly thinner than human's, but since they are quite "wrinkly" and fold upon each other, they look MUCH thicker than they actually are. (However, they do have very thick and long eyelashes, which is clearly an adaptation to a dusty environment.)
Furthermore, size really isn't everything since among mammals, the large whales (blue, humpback, grey, etc.) have some of the thinnest eyelids, even thinner than those of a common mouse.
And the animals with the largest eyes, such as the octopus and squid, don't have eyelids at all, at least not in the sense that we use the word. (They are able to "pull" the eye further into their bodies to protect them so that the surrounding skin and fat will bulge in front of the eye -- there is no actual "lid".)
Thanks for your interest in this -- I was also very surprised when I delved into this particular topic.
Thanks for clearing that up Taed!
Just out of curiosity, do you know the difference between primates (i.e. chimps, apes) and humans eyelid sizes? Or where I could find it?
The eyelid thickness of nearly all the primates is nearly identical, with humans beating out the rest by just a smidge. The bush baby makes a good run at it though, falling between humans and the other primates.
I found this information in the stacks of unpublished research in the back rooms of The Smithsonian. I have a friend who is one of the senior curators there, and sometimes she lets me wander around looking for stuff to publish. So, while the fact is based on largely unpublished research, I have no reason to doubt its scholarship.
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