I think it’s kind of funny how common a trope hive minds are in science fiction like we’re all super fascinated by the concept of a linked species that shares data through psychic link or whatever. But when it comes down to it it’s just as likely that an alien might see us and consider us to be a linked species because we are constantly connected and we share data through vibrations in the air or in codes that are just manipulating a space so different frequencies of light can be observed against each other or in an elaborate system of movement. And we are basically always doing this and none of our complex thoughts show up on their own they are built upon by others and every piece of ourselves is influenced by the networks of other humans that share data with us. Like sure we CAN exist as an individual unit but you die if you haven’t spent years getting data that teaches you how to survive like none of us can just LEAVE the hive mind right away and we only thrive when part of a communal unit. Idk maybe this is nothing but I think it’s kind of cool.
A human would get trapped on an alien world and ask for help getting back to earth and the alien would go “oh no! This species becomes both psychologically and physically unwell if not networked to other members of its species! Don’t worry little guy I’ll get you back to your monkey hive mind”
i believe that settled humans behave more like hive insects than we do like primates, even our closest cousins.
we collect food and bring it back to a central protected area to share with non-gatherers. we specialize into castes and roles. we cooperate to build grand structures to live in together and to defend from rival hives. we tend to have specific places equipped with specialized caretakers to raise and educate our young as a collective. our constructions get increasingly geometric and regimented the bigger our hive becomes. we often use other species in the maintenance and defence of our home. and we develop ways to leave messages to each other: not just signalling directly about current situations, but marking paths, posting warnings, and indicating work to be done in the future.
other primates don’t do any of this. none of them. not even chimps, our closest cousins in the world.
but hive insects do.
settled humans area hive species. that’s why we invent communication technology, and also why we so readily adopt it. language, messengers, roads, signal towers, writing, mail, printing presses, newspapers, telegrams, radio, phones, the internet. each time the hive gets that much better at operating like a hive instead of a troop. we’re running bee software on monkey hardware, and it’s working really well.
The eyes-in-the-front thing (usually) only applies to mammals. Crocodiles, arguably the inspiration for dragons, have eyes that look to the sides despite being a predator.
hey what up I’m about to be That Asshole
This isn’t a mammalian thing. When people talk about ‘eyes on the front’ or ‘eyes on the side,’ they’re really talking about binocular vision vs monocular vision. Binocular vision is more advantageous for predators because it’s what gives you depth perception; i.e, the distance you need to leap, lunge, or swipe to take out the fast-moving thing in front of you. Any animal that can position its eyes in a way that it has overlapping fields of vision has binocular vision. That includes a lot of predatory reptiles, including komodo dragons, monitor lizards, and chameleons.
(The eyes-in-front = predator / eyes-on-sides = prey thing holds true far more regularly for birds than it does for mammals. Consider owls, hawks, and falcons vs parrots, sparrows, and doves.)
But it’s not like binocular vision is inherently “better” than monocular vision. It’s a trade-off: you get better at leap-strike-kill, but your field of vision is commensurately restricted, meaning you see less stuff. Sometimes, the evolutionary benefit of binocular vision just doesn’t outweigh the benefit of seeing the other guy coming. Very few forms of aquatic life have binocular vision unless they have eye stalks, predator or not, because if you live underwater, the threat could be coming from literally any direction, so you want as wide a field of view as you can get. If you see a predator working monocular vision, it’s a pretty safe assumption that there is something else out there dangerous enough that their survival is aided more by knowing where it is than reliably getting food inside their mouths.
For example, if you are a crocodile, there is a decent chance that a hippo will cruise up your shit and bite you in half. I’d say that makes monocular vision worthwhile.
Which brings us back to OP’s point. Why would dragon evolution favor field of view over depth perception?
A lot of the stories I’ve read painted the biggest threats to dragons (until knights with little shiny sticks came along) as other dragons. Dragons fight each other, dragons have wars. And like fish, a dragon would need to worry about another dragon coming in from any angle. That’s a major point in favor of monocular vision. Moreover, you don’t need depth perception in order to hunt if you can breathe fucking fire. A flamethrower is not a precision weapon. If you can torch everything in front of you, who cares if your prey is 5 feet away or 20? Burn it all and sift among the rubble for meat once everything stops moving.
Really, why would dragons have eyes on the front of their heads? Seems like they’ve got the right idea to me.
Worthwhile cryptozoological discourse
i want to point out also that crocodiles live in water, which has much more perceptible currents than air does. the crocodile snout is sensitive! some sources say it’s as sensitive as a human fingertip. so they can have a really broad field of vision to scan around, and to gather a maximum amount of data on stuff abovethe water, while their sensitive snout is still below the water, feeling for the turbulence patterns of other swimming creatures. they employ both together.
they don’t need binocular vision to judge how close their prey might be. they have that big enormous triangular snout in front of them to feelit.
tldr; dragons have plenty of good reasons to have monocular fields of vision, possibly including sensitive snoots.
the name tyler sounds like it was first used post-ww2 like maybe 1960 until you find out it literally meant “guy who lays tile” (tile-er) 11th century england to refer to people that built houses. and then you read it as tile -er for the rest of yourlife
does piper mean guy who lays pipe
I know this is a sex joke, but… do people genuinely not know that a lot of surnames stem from professions? Tiler/Tyler became the surname for somebody who laid tile. Piper became a surname for somebody who played the pipes. Archer, Brewer, Butler, Carpenter, Clerk/Clark, Dexter, Farmer, Fisher, Mason, Miller, Potter, Sawyer, Sheppard/Shepherd, Smith, Tanner, Taylor/Tailor, Weaver…
People later started to give old family surnames as first names, and then over time, many of those became popular as first names in their own right. Is… is this not known?
a fun fact: germanic jews were forced en masse to adopt last names only a couple centuries ago, for tax reasons. before then it was just ‘dude son of guy’. so mostly the rabbis made everyone’s last names up themselves because they were the logical guy to do the census paperwork.
so that’s why ‘jewish names’ are so like that. goldstein (gold rock), goldfarb(gold colored), goldshmidt (goldsmith). three or four hundred years ago some tired rabbi ran out of ideas. you get tons of jews who are just something-thalbecause-thalmeans valley and that’s where they were when they got named. my favorite traditional jewish surname is just klein, small, because three hundred years ago some rabbi looked at a local guy and wrote down ‘shorty’.
Fun Also Fact: Taxes may have also been the reason the English got lastnames, too! “may have also been” because there’s some debate about if it was THE cause, but their popularity lines up chronologically.
The usual story is that, after William the Conqueror did his Thing, he commissioned a big census of his new Territory(The Domesday Book) and, since everyone was named off a not terribly long list of church names which, in practice, was shorter cuz ppl didn’t like picking the obscure and ill-omened ones(not allot of Barnabuses or Hezikiahs or Judases, if you can believe it :T), the clerks tasked with doing the census found themselves in need of a way to distinguish between ppl with the same names. So, professions were an easy go-to: John the Brewer becomes “John Brewer”, John the fisherman became “John Fisher”, John the Farmer becomes “John Farmer”(or John Fields, or John Tiller, or John Peasant, or John Planter, or John Gardener, or John Rowe: there were allot of farmers so allot of farming-surnames). Before that the English distinguished btwn ppl with the same names conventionally, through nicknames (Short John, Longjohn, John-down-the-way, Angry John, etc etc etc), and some of these ended up becoming surnames too, but they were just that: nicknames. It wasn’t until the Normans gave these names bureaucratic significance through the need to tell who to tax what(and if they paid it) that they became something passed down, one gen to the next, in England.
