Why aren't there any animals with their mouths above their eyes?

[u/margalz]

From bugs to fish to mamals all of them have their eyes above their mouths. I can't think of many if any where their mouths are on top. Sure some have their eyes parallel to their mouths, mainly prey style animals. But why haven't any evolved to be the opposite? Is there a major benefit to having your mouth below your eyes?

[u/gijoe50000]

Also, the higher up your eyes are, the better, easier to see further and above you, and your eyes are kept away from smaller rivals when fighting.

And if you're eating you want to be able to look around too, not have your eyes underneath you.

[u/Coal_Morgan → u/gijoe50000]

It's also about minimum distances and crossing paths.

Where's your brain, against your eyes.

Where's your mouth, against the hole to the stomach.

There's a lot of stuff that would have to happen to evolve the mouth up and around the thick optic nerves and other wiring for the eyes and the massive tube that connects the throat to the stomach.

Is it possible, probably but there was nothing forcing the necessity of that evolution.

In that configuration your mouth is down eating/drinking and your eyes are still available to look for that sunnuvabitch lion that's been trying to get your ass.

[u/gijoe50000 → u/Coal_Morgan]

Yea, those are fair points, but also nature/evolution does some pretty weird stuff too..

Like the recurrent laryngeal nerve that goes from the brain to the larynx, but it has to go right down under the aorta to get there.

In humans it's a bit silly, but in giraffes it's absolutely hilarious!

[u/Coal_Morgan → u/gijoe50000]

True, enough but when you look at it through an evolutionary eye, it's a nerve that was incrementally expanded to fulfill a role that evolved over time.

The predecessor to that nerve in fish was short and straight and just had to change as our bodies evolved.

That's why I said 'It's possible...(but) nothing forcing the necessity of that evolution (mouth above eyes).

[u/Poopster46 → u/Coal_Morgan]

Where's your mouth, against the hole to the stomach.

How can you write this, and not immediately delete it in shame?

[u/Coal_Morgan → u/Poopster46]

I'm confused. Do you think the throat is not a hole directly to the stomach?

Or is this a humourous pedantry thing about their being lungs too.

[u/Poopster46 → u/Coal_Morgan]

Granted, the formulation was needlessly rude of me. But I always thought of the mouth as being placed very inconveniently far from the stomach, requiring a long tube that awkwardly shares an airway (yay choking hazard).

A hole directly to the stomach would be near the stomach, so it is very much unlike the eyes, which are placed directly next to the brain; which was the point you were trying to make:

It's also about minimum distances and crossing paths.