Top 5 animals with the largest eye size (9 photos)

Eyes are the mirror of the soul! Poets sing about them, romantics drown in them and boys disappear! It’s worth remembering, for example, Puss in Boots, who, with his signature look, was able to lull the vigilance of even the stern ogre. Therefore, meet the top of those whose eyes will not leave anyone indifferent - the most big-eyed!





5th place

Domestic cats (Felis catus) are big fans of setting records, and this case is no exception. The diameter of their eyes is 16 mm. It sounds weak, but if we applied the same proportions to a person, then the diameter of his eye would be 20 cm.



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Giant soul mirrors help cats hunt at night and notice the slightest movements even from afar. But everything has its price. Cats are best at recognizing objects that move in a horizontal direction. But if the thing moves up and down, it is much more difficult for a small predator to focus on it.





Big eyes are not only a hunting tool, but also a way to control people!

4th place

The African ostrich (Struthio camelus) has acquired simply huge eyes - 5 cm in diameter. Such eyepieces allow the bird to see at a distance of 3 km, which is very convenient in open savannas, where the bird lives. In addition, the ostrich's blinkers are positioned so that it sees an almost complete panorama - the ostrich's viewing angle is 300 degrees!



But what eyelashes!

But, alas, such eyepieces leave almost no room for the brain. The meme that an ostrich's eyes are bigger than its brain is almost not a meme! The bird's head is approximately proportional to its eyes: its shape is diamond-shaped with sides measuring 59.26 mm in length and 42.30 mm in width.



So, I don’t understand, did you just call me stupid or what?

3rd place

The top three is opened by the great horned owl (Bubo virginianus). The mirrors of the soul of this owl are larger than those of most vertebrates - a little more than 5 cm. But their main feature is not their size, but their structure. The eyes of all owls are not round, but cylindrical. Roughly speaking, if our organ of vision is called the eyeball, then in owls it is the eye bulb.



Thus, most of the body of the eye is located inside the skull.

Thanks to this structure, giant owl eyes have excellent vision over long distances and in the dark. But there is also a minus: the bird cannot look to the side, up or down. The feathered eyeball is planted so deep in the skull that it is unable to move! To solve this problem, the birds pumped up their neck apparatus: the owls' heads rotate 270 degrees!



To keep the owl's eyes safe and sound, the birds have special growths on their skulls that resemble pilot glasses.

2nd place

If the colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) knew that it would only take 2nd place in this top, it would have burst into tears. This is because in fact his eyes are the largest in the world. They reach as much as 40 cm in diameter! Eyes the size of a small pumpkin are needed in order to catch the slightest glimmer of light in the darkness of the deep sea, where the mollusk lives. But in relation to body size, this is not such an achievement. When you yourself are 14 meters in size, a 40-centimeter eye is something that goes without saying.



Observing deep-sea squid in its natural habitat is extremely difficult. Therefore, all physiological data is available to us only thanks to museums.

1 place

The winner in the big-eyed top is the Philippine tarsier (Carlito syrichta). The cute furry creature with its 2-centimeter eyes overtook the colossal squid and took its place of honor in the Guinness Book of Records as the animal with the largest eyes.



Who was chosen as the winner?! Me?!

This is because, in relation to body size, its gLaza is 13% of the entire animal! If humans had such eyepieces, our eyeballs would become the size of real apples. And all because the tarsier is a nocturnal primate. His eyes are tuned to navigate the pitch black jungle.