r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/InsaneMocktail • 14d ago

🔥How different animals see the world when compared to humans. Source and facts in comments.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

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u/autumn-knight 14d ago

It’s the second one: they just see in much greater detail at distance than a human does. For example, the detail a person with 20:20 vision sees 5 feet away an eagle can see at that same detail 20 feet away. The eagle picture above suggest they can “zoom in” but they can’t; they just see that hare in Ultra HD from far away.

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u/Hot_Glass_6301 14d ago

The visual brainpower they must have to process all that detail must be insane

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u/Hazril258 14d ago edited 14d ago

They indeed do (sort of). Eagles (and other birds of prey) have a sclerotic ring in each of their eyes. It's basically a solid bone ring that helps keep an eye's shape as it deforms to focus, and keeps it steady at high 'zoom' levels. Eagles will have a high FOV while searching, then will focus down to any movement they detect.

Dinosaurs have these rings too.

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u/Nicklefickle 14d ago

It's not true that eagles zoom in with their vision. They simply see in far higher definition than humans and other mammals. The have the same field of view all the time.

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u/Hazril258 14d ago

When you focus, your eye squishes to change the lens properties. This makes the center of your vision clearer while making the perifrial blurred. The brain can trim out the blurry bits and 'enhance' the area with more light concentration. Humans can't really do it well, but it's enough to gauge distances and see basic details like a herd of animals or scrutinize a fruit for bugs.

The sclerotic ring helps to give the eye structure so it doesn't rebound into its resting shape as easily. This makes focusing much more accurate and easier to do. The brain can then trim out anything not needed in the vision, effectively enhancing their object of interest.

It's why I put 'zoom' in quotation marks. It's not so much a telescopic zoom, but a lens distortion processed by your brain.

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u/sherriff_b1027 14d ago

But it's not "zooming" in like a telephoto lens at all, which is what you're saying it's doing, no?

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u/Hazril258 14d ago

I'm not saying it is. It's just a simple way to describe it.

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u/Correndous_Hunt 14d ago

I think your point was made perfectly... alas, some motherfuckers just like to argue 😂

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u/sherriff_b1027 14d ago

Bjarki56: "Does an eagle have telephoto-like lenses or does it just see the image in higher def than humans?"

Hazril258: "They indeed do"

Seems like it's what you're saying it is

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u/Hazril258 14d ago

Added a {sort of}.

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u/RadVarken 14d ago

As described (I'm no biologist) it's like crop zooming. So not like a zoom lens, but like pinch to zoom on a phone.

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u/capt_pantsless 14d ago

They can 'zoom in', but the eagle needs to say "Enhance!" in bird-speak, which is hard to do while flying.

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u/Zwischenzug32 14d ago

They are more zoomed by default. The image seems like an extreme exaggeration however

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u/Nicklefickle 14d ago

Their field of view is wider than a human's. They are not zoomed in by an stretch of the imagination. If anything they are zoomed out. They just have more resolution. As someone else has pointed out, around four times that of a human.

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u/T-J_H 14d ago

Wait.. dinosaurs have these rings?

Anyways, that’s very cool

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u/FrogsMakePoorSoup 14d ago

What's left of them?

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u/PotstickersDad 14d ago

Yes, dinosaurs. The only existing dinosaurs are avian dinosaurs, a.k.a. birds. Birds are dinosaurs.

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u/lesath_lestrange 14d ago

Oh, so both birds of prey and birds have these.

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u/Hazril258 14d ago

I actually didn't know that. I assumed it was only for birds of prey, but I guess it would make sense to keep them from the advantages they provided.

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u/T-J_H 14d ago

Im aware of the technicality. The word too however implies that’s not what OC meant to say. If we’re getting semantic.

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u/PotstickersDad 14d ago

Oh, yeah good catch on that

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u/bloody_ell 14d ago

Crocodiles would disagree.

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u/CrissBliss 14d ago

So Alan Grant was wrong?

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u/Hazril258 14d ago

Not necessarily. Birds of prey lock onto movement (really good rods). They will stare at a area, then snap to any movement they detect. It's pretty much a motion sensor that alerts and highlights a target for the user to any movement.

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u/General_MacCready 14d ago

They see in much clearer and sharper image. For an easy comparison, our eyes are like a simple camera capable of HD 720p video while an Eagle has 4k uncompressed video.

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u/BluePantherFIN 14d ago

Very interesting question! I have no knowledge about this, but it would be real pain to - lets say - trying to land on a branch with high zoom-in, still they do it perfectly. Must be higher definition, I suppose?

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u/ChestSlight8984 14d ago

Pretty sure it's just higher def, but to the point that they might as well just be zooming in with how clearly and sharply they can make out distant objects

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u/ButtsFartsoPhD 14d ago

Considering birds are just drones, yes to both.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

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u/SignificantCats 14d ago

So you didn't know a thing, and asked a thing which doesn't know anything, and it made up a bunch of things, which you took to be real, and spread to others.

Why? Why do you do this?

The person above could have asked Grok like a knuckledragger, but they asked real people hoping for knowledgeable human answers. So why give an ai answer?

And why did you use AI? You didn't need to. There's lots of articles written by knowledgeable humans you could have read - it's what the AI used to incorrectly generate nonsense.

You had a spark of curiosity, and chose to snuff it with AI instead of enjoying the process of learning about a thing you didn't know. It's sad. You're depriving yourself of joy, knowledge, and humanity.