Chimps have the scariest eyes

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]I've been sketching more chimpanzees and focusing on their eyes. And I learned something very, very cool. Most chimpanzees don't have the white bits in their eyes that you and I have. That white bit is called scara. And although some chimpanzees have that, most have really dark scara, almost black. Now there is an idea that attempts to explain why and it's got a very science sounding name and it's called the cooperative eye hypothesis which basically says humans have white scar so that we can follow each other's eye movement each other's gaze and we can communicate nonverbally. So if a person is focusing or giving their attention to something we can share that attention with them and even signal our intentions to each other kind of like a precursor to language. Now, this tiny detail has a huge impact when you're representing non-human animals in media. For example, like the recent Planet of the Apes films. If I remember correctly, each ape had white scara, and it helps us humanize them and even see how they think or feel when they're not signing or talking. But the art nerd in me loves this knowledge to be able to use it in my drawing. So, when you're drawing or painting something, the thing that I love is when you can make your subject, your animal or person look at the viewer and it makes it seem as if the the subject is looking at you no matter where you stand in relation to it. So, I've got a chimp study that I did uh to show you this and uh if it works correctly. So the chimp eye should be looking directly at you and no matter where I move it, it should follow you.

[00:01:39]No matter kind of where you you are in relation to that eye. Now that technique is called ubiquitous gaze. Ubiquitous is just a fancy word meaning found everywhere. Oddly, the first place I heard this was an action comedy film called Shanghai Nights, but it just means that you have pursuing eyes in your art. And now hopefully you know a little bit more about chimpanzeee eyes and how to use that in your artwork.