People look at animals in the zoo. But there’s another side to the exchange.
Animals look back — at people. Monkey see, monkey do.
Democrat-Gazette photographer Benjamin Krain went looking for the blinks, glances and stares that animals give back at the Little Rock Zoo. He found the eye of the tiger — and of the eagle, alligator, parrot and gorilla.
Krain started with the idea that zoo animals “spend most of their lives on display,” being seen, which led to this photo page theme of animals’ eyes.
“I thought it was interesting that most of the animals stared back at me,” the photographer says. The gorilla’s eyes seem to show the animal is not just looking, but also thinking — forming some idea about the guy in front of him.
The albino corn snake might be thinking, too. The snake’s flat red-and-orange eyes don’t show it, though, at least not the way people’s eyes do.
Portrait painters know “the eyes are very important,” says Reita Miller, art administrator of the Showcase Arkansas Gallery in Little Rock’s Cox Creative Center. The viewer’s attention “goes right to that face and the eyes.” People say the eyes are the mirror of the soul (an old proverb ), and write poems and songs about “Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes,” and “Brown-Eyed Girl” and “Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain.” But if you peer deep into the eyes of a snake, what’s at the bottom ?
“Frogs — I don’t know what frogs think,” the Little Rock Zoo’s general curator, Mark Shaw, says. “Or fish — they don’t even close their eyes.” Some animals look more expressive than others. A dog’s big brown eyes seem to say everything a person wants to hear. “If dogs could talk,” as Andy Rooney said, “it would take a lot of the fun out of owning one.” The reason a dog can express so much with a look is that people know their dogs, Shaw says.
But what’s the message in a rhino’s peepers ? A bear’s ? An owl’s ?
Unsure, people tend to read their own emotions into an animal’s eyes, Shaw says. They’re having a good time at the zoo: The animals look happy.
“Dogs look up to you,” Winston Churchill said. “Cats look down on you. Give me a pig. He just looks you in the eye and treats you like an equal.” The gorilla peers from under that heavy brow right back at you and he sees... what ?
In the wild, the animal probably would see a threat, Shaw suggests. In the zoo, he might have been hand-raised. He would see the person who raised him as a parent, and he might see people in general as friends.
People think eye-to-eye contact means honesty (“ Look me in the eye” ) and attraction (“ The look of love is in your eyes. ” — Dusty Springfield ).
Animals generally avoid locking eyes with each other, Shaw says. In the wild, eye contact signals aggression. In the zoo, they can’t help eyeballing people.
So the tiger’s look your way means... who knows ? “Tiggers are wonderful things,” according to the Disney cartoon version of “Winnie the Pooh.” Cartoons run wild with the human penchant to humanize animals. This summer’s cartoon movie, Kung-Fu Panda, imagines a googly-eyed bear that takes up martial arts.
Funny eyes give life to the cartoon menagerie. “Eyes bring the high voltage,” Christopher Hart writes in his new how-to book, The Cartoonist’s Big Book of Drawing Animals (Watson-Guptill, 2008 ).
Bright eyes look earnest, Hart instructs. Big pupils are cute. Sometimes, one eye pops open at the same time the other squints, “creating some really silly looks.” A cartoon alligator can look silly, but the real-life reptile returns a pale green gaze from times much older than silliness. The flamingo’s eye is a bullet of yellow on pink. Part of the mystery is animal eyes that don’t look the least bit human.
Krain focused on the difference. He saw “textures, and colors and shapes” — eyes so unlike Paul Newman’s famous blue lamps or even Popeye’s one black dot that they’re more like abstract paintings.
Some animals see better than people. Some look to the side, instead of straight ahead the way people do. Some can see at night; some can’t see in color.
Scientists know how eye structures differ, how light strikes the retina, but not what the image means to the individual mind of the person or parrot behind the lens.
A person looking at bird, or a bird looking at person, the experience is “totally a matter of interpretation,” Shaw says.
See ya later, alligator.
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