Just stared into a lemurs eyes for half a minute aparently (that felt like an hour) and it freaked me tf out. Since been staring into peoples eyes or animals eyes and its consistently weird and freaky no matter what. Also it feels like my conciousness is behind my eyes and maybe thats why they say eyes are the window to the soul.

Noone may ask what I took or how much

29 points

Animals often avoid eye contact, it’s considered rude. Humans are a very touchy-talky-looky species. So yeah, it’s freaky. I used to think I suffer from face-blindness (forgot the fancy name of it), then it occurred to me that I just straight up forget/avoid to look into people’s eyes so I never even see their faces. Now I sometimes try to make a conscious effort to look at people’s eyes - but how long is even appropriate?

Your story of the lemur reminds of staring into the eyes of a genet for probably about a century during a somewhat substance-enhanced camping trip. Can’t say I was freaked out, rather honoured by the animal deciding to hang out with me for a while?

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4 points

A Genet? That’s crazy. I didn’t know they were still releasing new animals.

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1 point

I had no clue this thing existed till I met it - I did think it was a lemur at first but then I looked it up. They probably arrived in the Iberian peninsula as pets so it’s not too surprising that they approach people.

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3 points

Prosopagnosia (face blindness) is the disorder you are thinking of

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2 points

I keep confusing it with pareidolia - seeing faces everywhere.

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2 points

If you had both, would you see faces everywhere that you never recognize?

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Yep and the ted chiang short story on that is brilliant.

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11 points

Odd, i find eye beautiful and mesmerising, i can stare at my cat’s eye without feeling the freakiness you felt.

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8 points

You’re freaking the cat out though

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7 points

c/im14andthisisdeep

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7 points

Face eggs

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I don’t normally look people in the eyes, but animals? I have no problem with it. The animals do, most of the time. Dogs, though, are like people and like eye contact. And I like looking into their big puppy eyes 🥺

That whole “eyes are the window to the soul” thing only makes sense to me if you include the rest of the face, though; eyes alone don’t show expression. The eye brows and cheeks and mouth do.

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6 points

And I like looking into their big puppy eyes

That is a bit of co-evolution between humans and dogs. While their nose is still their primary sense, their eyes have grown in importance to aid their communication and bonding with us.

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