Excellent vision was a big T-rex advantage

Question: Did the movie "Jurassic Park" get it right when one human tells another that if they stand stock still, T-rex won't be able to see them, even though the beast is right in front of them? Was "sight for 'saur eyes" really that bad?

Answer: Actually, not only did T-rex have some of the best vision in animal history but at that range it would also have smelled the people, says University of Oregon computer scientist Kent A. Stevens in the "Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology." By studying skull bones and measuring eye positions in facial models of several types of dinosaurs, the scientists concluded that T-rex had a binocular field of view of 55 degrees, wider than modern hawks. The wider an animal's binocular field, the better its depth perception and capacity to see objects — even those that are motionless or camouflaged. The huge eye sockets suggest very large eyes for T-rex. If those eyes were bird-like rather than reptilian in design, it might have had better vision than our own for seeing fine detail. Also since the eyes are very far separated, T-rex might have been able to see in depth much farther than we can.

The point is, says Stevens, that T-rex had better vision than that needed just for scavenging and could well have been a predator. Over the millennia it evolved sight-improving features, such as the snout becoming narrower and lower and the eyes enlarged and facing forward more. "It was a selective advantage for T-rex to see 3-dimensionally ahead of it, and with the size of its eyeballs, it couldn't help but have excellent vision."

Question: What's the science mystery to a fly walking upside down on the ceiling?

Answer: The un-mystery part is the tiny claws and specialized adhesive foot pads with minute hairs, from 2/10,000 to 2/1,000 inch long, that the fly uses to hold on, says biologist Anne Peattie in "Discover" magazine.

Scientists at first thought the hairs must act like little hooks that fit into surface irregularities, but later study showed them to be too flexible for this. Instead the fly secretes a sticky fluid over its feet, in effect gluing itself to the ceiling. Yet curiously, the feet of spiders and geckos are perfectly dry, so why would a lightweight fly need glue when a much heavier gecko doesn't? And once the fly has glued itself, how does it suddenly detach for takeoff? "We won't understand the true nature of how flies actually walk on the ceiling until these questions are answered."

Question: In a baseball game, who's off and running with the crack of the bat — or at least he had better be or risk losing his job?