Mondo Knows Facts
The tuatara has a third eye on its head
The parietal eye has a lens and retina but only senses light levels Young tuataras show the organ clearly under a translucent scale before it becomes overgrown. It helps regulate daily and seasonal rhythms. Tuataras are the last survivors of an ancient reptile lineage found only in New Zealand. It sits in Mondo's animals collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Tags: reptiles, tuatara, senses
The tuatara has a third eye on its head: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- The parietal eye has a lens and retina but only senses light levels. The figure is taken from Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a animals fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Animals shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.