For centuries, people had no idea what or how animals see. This mystery has only been revealed to us by modern scientific research. Here are some examples of what the world looks like through the eyes of our little brothers – mammals, reptiles, birds, fish and insects.
Let’s start with the most popular pets, namely dogs and cats. It will come as a surprise to many that they do not have very good eyesight at all. They primarily use their sense of smell and hearing to explore their sensory surroundings – these senses are more sensitive than their sight. In addition, their eyes are more sensitive to movement and have well-developed perspective and depth perception.
Both dogs and cats are colorblind, but in the end it is our couch tigers that have the worse eyesight and practically no color vision at all. Dogs do not register red and orange, but they can see blue and violet well, as well as ultraviolet. At the same time, they can distinguish about 40 shades of gray.
Birds see differently depending on the species. For example, pigeons, while not very colorful themselves, reign supreme in the avian world in terms of the number of colors they register. Their eyes are able to see millions of different shades and perceive small objects even tens of kilometers away. At the same time, their viewing angle is a full 360 degrees.
In general, birds with a daytime lifestyle perceive a much larger range of colors than humans, including ultraviolet light. Research also shows that birds can see colors much brighter than humans. In contrast, birds of prey such as eagles, kestrels and vultures have excellent binocular vision, allowing them to easily see prey from thousands of meters away. Due to their special eye structure, birds can focus on an object and see it, as it were, under multiple magnification.
Contrary to popular belief, insects do not see hundreds of copies of a single image. Rather, each lens represents a small part of the whole image, like a mosaic or puzzle. Some insects have up to 30,000 lenses in their eyeballs, but perhaps the most interesting in this regard is the dragonfly. Its brain works so fast that it detects movements in slow motion.
Most fish have ultraviolet receptors and a more spherical eye lens than humans. They see the world in shades of green, red, and blue. Deep-sea fish can also see in the dark. As for sharks, they see the world in black and white, but underwater their vision is much better than ours.
Snakes have two types of vision – day vision, which responds to movement, and night vision, which is heat-oriented. That is, at night, thermolocators will pick up the infrared thermal signature from warm objects in the environment and prey will not hide, even when standing still. In contrast, during the day, a snake will not see a stationary “meal”.
Frogs, on the other hand, can only see moving objects. In the case of small ones, the jumping amphibian will automatically try to catch them, but from large ones it will run away. Interestingly, crustaceans see similarly to frogs.
Horses (and animals similar to them) see the environment in two halves and are not able to connect them completely. They also do not register colors, but compensate for this with a large number of shades of gray. Cows, on the other hand, from their perspective, do not graze in green meadows because they see mostly shades of orange and red.
Main photo: Alexandru Rotariu/unsplash.com
