What Do Cats See?
Do you want to know about the mysteries of what cats see? Have you ever wondered how a cat sees the world? Humans and cats have much in common, but a cat's vision has some peculiarities that we are going to reveal. Read on and discover some of the key visual perspectives of cats and be amazed by their wonderful and unique way of seeing life. In the next OneHowTo.com article we explain in detail what cats can see.
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The field of vision in cats is wider than in humans. The field is the area that you can see when your eyes focus on a specific point, including what you see straight ahead, what you see above, below and to the sides of an area of focus. Cats' eyes have a visual field of 200 degrees, compared to 180 degrees of human vision.
Unlike humans, a feline's vision is more blurred during daylight hours, as the light receptor cells in cats' eyes are different to ours. Although both humans and cats have rods for vision in black and white in dim light, and cones to differentiate colors in bright environments, the reality is that the cells are not distributed in the same way. In cats, rods predominate and in people, cones are more numerous. In addition, rods are not directly connected to the optic nerve but are connected together in groups of cells first, unlike humans. This allows them to see much better in low light or darkness. During the day, cats have a somewhat blurred vision because the rods do not send enough information to the brain.
Felines are up to eight times better in dim light than humans. A cat's vision has evolved in such a way that they have excellent hunting skills during darker hours. Wild cats needed so much time to hunt in the past that their eyes have adjusted to a lack of light in order to be more efficient. As discussed in the previous section, rods dominate the eyes of cats, which is why cats can see six to eight times more clearly in the dark.
Another of the peculiarities of a cat's vision is that they do not see in black and white. Cats are not interested in colors. This obsession with color is rare in mammals except for humans. Humans have three types of color receptor cells: red, green and blue, but like dogs, cats don't have the red cone, so they only see colors like yellow, green or blue. Apart from being unable to perceive red colors and their shades, they also can't perceive saturated or bright colors.
Cats have larger eyes than humans, as they need their eyes to help prolong their hunting activity for longer. Having such big eyes also makes certain things more difficult because they find it hard to focus. People have muscles in the eyes that distort nearby objects to help them see better, but this is much more complex for cats because their eyes function as if they have a camera's focus. In short, their near vision is not as good as that of humans.
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