Why’s the head up there anyway?

It never made sense to me, how the bodies of all mobile have their brain and head and sensing center outside the protection of the body itself. Obviously the control center should be in the middle, particularly  for warring species—where its safer from attack. It didn’t make sense until I thought about the speed of sensing, the length of time to react to the random dropping anvil, the speed at which one can dodge the flying pumpkin coming at their eyes. That’s the defense. So it was wonderful to hear about it on the Radiolab speed episode.