How About the World As Animals See It?

this is Finch and he's a tarsier I know

he looks like someone's just pointed

their headlights at him in the middle of

the

night but the size of his eyes was an

evolutionary adaptation that allowed him

to see better in the

dark his eyeballs are as big as his

brain Tarsiers have the biggest eye to

head size ratio out of all

mammals now it's a known fact that

humans and animals don't see the world

in the same same way but how about we

dive into how some creatures experience

our

reality to start out with Finch well he

rocks at night vision while humans

experience the nighttime in a scale of

gray colors Tarsiers can only see

monochromatically but the orbs in their

eyes allow them to gather every single

bit of light available in an environment

this means that they can hunt insects

and Tiny Birds with a bizarre precision

even if it's pitch black

outside they can't move their eyeballs

though so if they see something to their

left or right they have to turn their

entire

heads FYI there's actually a night

vision goggle named tarer that allows

humans to experience Darkness much like

these animals

do in case you're wondering this is what

a forest would look like to a

tarer and speak of seeing in the dark

these pals are called Arctic reindeer

they developed an interesting feat that

helps them see in dim light the back of

their eyes changes color according to

the season in the summertime the back of

their eyes is gold and in wintertime

it's blue you see winter light is at

least 100,000 times fainter than

summerl this adaptation helps reindeer

find food and protect themselves from

predators during the 3 months of harsh

winter you can also find this type of

adaptation in other nocturnal animals

such as our beloved cats picture it like

a mirror sitting behind the

retina this is the basic structure of an

eye on the outermost layer you'll see

the pupil and the iris this is where

light first enters the eye and the

muscles behind the iris squeeze and

stretch the lens to direct the light on

to the back of the

eye this innermost part aka the back of

the eye is what we call the retina over

there we can find photo receptors called

rods which capture dimmer lighting and

other ones called cones which perceive

bright

light for animals that have to see well

in the dark as a matter of survival the

photo receptors absorb every bit of

photo Photon available in an

environment by the way photons are

another name for tiny units of light if

you've ever flashed some light into a

cat's eye in the middle of the night

you've probably seen this mirrorlike

adaptation in action it bounces back all

the light it receives to the photo

receptor giving it a second chance to

absorb everything it possibly

can it's what makes feline or owl eyes

look so yellow in the dark and make give

the feeling that you're inside a horror

movie now if we enrolled all animal

species of the world in a competition to

see who had the best eyesight which

species do you think would win well this

result is not as straightforward as it

may look it depends on which category

we're talking

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about if we're thinking about the animal

with the sharpest Vision we have to talk

about birds of

prey more specifically the likes of a

paragen Falcon these Falcons have a type

of binocular vision eight times as sharp

as humans do this means that while

they're flying at impressively fast

speeds they can spot with immense

Precision a rabbit over a mile away this

is possible because Birds of Prey have

around 1 million cones in their phobia

on the back of their eyes for comparison

humans have only around 30,000

cones but if we're talking about which

animal can perceive the widest range of

color then things get a bit more

complicated remember when we talked

about cones and rods they are the ones

responsible for perceiving light and

sending the signals to our brains that

allow us to form images but our cones

and rods only capture certain

wavelengths of light to put it simply

the amount of colors a species can see

depends on which types of photo

receptors it

has our dog buddies have only two types

of

receptors this means that they mainly

see the colors from the blue and yellow

Spectrum if you wear anything from the

red color spectrum while you're walking

your dog they will probably perceive it

as a gray or something like

that amazingly this blue bottle

butterfly has at least 15 types of photo

receptors seven of them are wired to

different tonalities of Blues and greens

which means that they can see colors

humans can only ever drink dream of

seeing researchers believe that since

these butterflies live in dense lush

green forests this adaptation might help

them track other of their species during

high-speed

chases if we change environments and

take a look at aquatic animals mantis

shrimps probably have a pretty

psychedelic Vision these funny looking

creatures have a whopping 16 varieties

of photo receptors with five of them

reserved for the ultraviolet or UV

Spectrum ultraviolet rays are really

short wavelengths which are invisible to

humans the thing science still doesn't

understand is how exactly these mantis

shrimps view the world around them sure

they can perceive a bunch of colors but

they can't necessarily distinguish all

of these colors amongst themselves this

happens because image processing is done

in the

brain after the light hits the retina

the retina sends information down our

nervous system and a colored image

starts being formed in our brains one

might wonder though what goes on inside

these mantis shrimp's brains

huh and what about motion the winners in

this category are insects you've

probably seen a movie scene where an

insect's eyesight looks like a

kaleidoscope of thousands of tiny TV

screens but that's not really true

these multiple lenses serve as photo

receptors to capture all available

light you see to have the fastest motion

Vision photo receptors need to quickly

sense changes in light so let's take a

fly as an example although they're

shortsighted their eyes give them an

almost

360° view of their surroundings that

would be a pretty neat superhuman power

to have

huh their brain processes motion

information pretty quickly

10 times faster than humans do which is

why it's so hard to catch

them some species have terrible eyesight

and have to depend on other mechanisms

to see the world around

them for example Dolphins use their ears

to see under the

water I know that sounds weird but they

use something called

echolocation Dolphins emit extremely

high frequency sound waves that are

classified as ultrasound which humans

can't

hear while they're swimming they emit a

type of clicking sound to scan the water

for food and other

animals whichever way sound bounces back

to them will help them identify what's

in the water ahead and move around

them that's also what bats do to help

them move around the really dark

environments they usually live

in snakes have pretty bad eyesight it's

believed that some some can't see color

at all snakes that spend most of their

time under the ground have small simple

eyes that can only tell the difference

between light and

dark snakes that live above ground have

better eyesight they can see ultraviolet

light which helps them hunt in broad

daylight now the most interesting ones

are snakes such as pythons and

Vipers they have a special something

called pit organs on their heads pit

organs are an important adaptation that

allows snakes to see heat

sources actually they can detect

infrared radiation from a body source

which helps them to detect their

prey if I were a rodent living in the

forest I'd be pretty scared of these

guys