  We study the dynamics of a \emph{myopic} forager that randomly wanders on a
lattice in which each site contains one unit of food. Upon encountering a
food-containing site, the forager eats all the food at this site with
probability $p<1$; otherwise, the food is left undisturbed. When the forager
eats, it can wander $\mathcal{S}$ additional steps without food before starving
to death. When the forager does not eat, either by not detecting food on a full
site or by encountering an empty site, the forager goes hungry and comes one
time unit closer to starvation. As the forager wanders, a multiply connected
spatial region where food has been consumed---a desert---is created. The
forager lifetime depends non-monotonically on its degree of myopia $p$, and at
the optimal myopia $p=p^*(\mathcal{S})$, the forager lives much longer than a
normal forager that always eats when it encounters food. This optimal lifetime
grows as $\mathcal{S}^2/\ln\mathcal{S}$ in one dimension and faster than a
power law in $\mathcal{S}$ in two and higher dimensions.
