Eagle Eyes: What Would it be Like to Have the Vision of an Eagle?

What would it be like to have the Vision of an Eagle?

Eagles have unparalleled vision in the Animal Kingdom. They require incredible vision in order for them to catch small prey such as mice and hares. An eagle’s vision allows them to see an ant crawling on the ground from the roof of a 10-story building – the equivalent of being able to see a spot on a footballer’s face from the highest seating row in Old Trafford or Wembley stadium.

Objects in the direct line of an eagle’s vision appear magnified, tremendously coloured, and rendered in an inconceivable array of shades. Two eyeball features grant eagles sharper vision:

1. Eagles’ retinas are more densely coated with light-detecting cells (called cones) than human retinas, enhancing their power to resolve fine details, just as higher pixel density increases the resolving power of cameras.

2. Eagles have a much deeper fovea – a cone-rich structure in the backs of the eyes of both humans and eagles that detects light from the centre of our visual field. The human fovea is a like a bowl, while in an eagle it’s a convex pit. Some investigators think this deep fovea allows their eyes to act like a telephoto lens, giving them extra magnification in the centre of their field of view.

Eagles can also see ultraviolet light — an ability that evolved to help them detect the UV-reflecting urine trails of small prey.