The idea for Rex's bad vision came from the writer of the book and carried on to the movie. Chrichton actually retracted this in his sequel novel, The Lost World:
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Lost World (Michael Crichton version)
Sara Harding said, "Why did Dodgson just stand around like that? That's not the way to act around predators. You get caught around lion, you make a lot of noise, wave your hands, throw things at them. Try to scare them off. You don't just stand there."
"He probably read the wrong research paper, "Malcolm said, shaking his head. "There's been a theory going around that tyrannosaurs can only see movement. A guy named Roxton made casts of rex braincases, and concluded that tyrannosaurs had the brain of a frog."
[...]
"Roxton," Levin said, "believed that tyrannosaurs had a visual system like an amphibian: like a frog. A frog sees motion but doesn't see stillness. But it is quite impossible that a predator such as a tyrannosaur would have a visual system that worked that way. Quite impossible. Because the most common defence of prey animals is to freeze. A deer or something like that, it senses danger, and it freezes. A predator has to be able to see them anyway. And of course a tyrannosaur could."
Over the radio, Levine snorted with disgust. "It's just like the other idiotic theory put forth by Grant a few years back that a tyrannosaur could be confused by a driving rainstorm, because it was not adapted to wet climates. That's equally absurd.[...]I'm quite sure tyrannosaurs saw plenty of rain, and the evolved to deal with it."
"So is there any reason why a tyrannosaur might not attack somebody?" Malcolm said.
"Yes, of course. The most obvious one," Levine said.
"Which is?"
"If it wasn't hungry. If it had just eaten another animal. Anything larger than a goat would take care of its hunger for hours to come. No, no. The tyrannosaur sees fine, moving or still."
That passage also implicates Grant as theorising that the tyrannosaur could not see him, not because of frog DNA, but because of the rainstorm during that initial attack in Jurassic Park. I'm not sure if this is a case of revisionism on the part of Crichton, or if that's what he really had in mind regarding Grant's explanation in that academic corner of his mind, and somehow readers made the non-implicit connection with the frog DNA thing.
For within each death there is always a new life, a new beginning - Dillon, Alien 3
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