Meanwhile, he says, if you're the kind of animal that gets hunted, "you're very likely to have a horizontal pupil" and to have your eyes on the side of your head. In general, round pupils seem to be common in taller hunters that actively chase down their prey, says Banks. "So for example foxes, in the dog lineage, have vertical pupils, but wolves have round pupils," he says.Īnd while a small pet cat has vertical slits, Sprague says, "the larger predators, like lions and tigers, have round pupils." Some frogs have heart-shaped pupils, while geckos have pupils that look like pinholes arranged in a vertical line. "There are some weird ones out there," says Martin Banks, a vision scientist at the University of California, Berkeley.Ĭuttlefish have pupils that look like the letter "W," and dolphins have pupils shaped like crescents. The pupil is the hole that lets light in, and it comes in lots of different shapes. The shape of the animal's pupil, it turns out, is closely related to the animal's size and whether it's a predator or prey. Scientists have now done the first comprehensive study of these three kinds of pupils. And the eyes of other animals, like goats and horses, have slits that are horizontal. But a tiger has round pupils - like humans do. Take a close look at a house cat's eyes and you'll see pupils that look like vertical slits. Bottom row, from left: domestic cat, horse, gecko. Can you guess which eyes belong to what animal? Top row, from left: cuttlefish, lion, goat.
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