Boffins who’ve been studying sea snakes have revealed a bunch of interesting info about the slippery creatures – including that the males have developed bigger eyes to help them perv on the ladies.

Female aipysurine sea snakes have become larger than their male counterparts, but their male counterparts might have got bigger eyes to help them find a mate.

A study which has found that the animals have undergone a range of strange adaptations to help them survive in the ocean has been published by The Royal Society.

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Richard Shine, the study’s author and a professor of biology at Macquarie University in Oz, told Newsweek: “Males had larger eyes, compared to head length, in all six species. It was statistically significant in three of those species.

“One reason for larger eyes in males may be that they have shifted to vision to find mates, because (unlike land snakes) they can't follow a scent trail laid onto the ground by a female as she moves along.”

The paper states: “Sexual selection on mate-finding ability offers a plausible selective advantage for larger relative eye size in males.

“Unlike their terrestrial counterparts, male sea snakes cannot locate reproductive females by following substrate-deposited pheromonal trails; and instead may rely upon visual cues to find mates until the other snake is close enough for chemosensory sampling. The resulting difficulty in finding mates may have imposed strong selection on visual acuity in male sea snakes.”

Other possibilities for the evolution of the males’ eyes are that they may have been too small to see very well, or the eye size may be based on the different foraging habits of the boys and the girls.

The authors of the study said they hoped their research into evolutionary changes such as eye and head size will shine some light on how the creatures have coped over the ages with the transition from living on land to living in the sea.

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