Cats are known for their excellent eyesight, which allows them to spot their prey even in the dark. Not a single detail, not a single movement escapes their eye. Let’s find out how cats see the world surrounding them and us, what makes it so special?
Cats are skilled hunters, so everything in their bodies is arranged in such a way as to facilitate and improve hunting, including of course the sight. Cats, like humans, have photoreceptors – rods and cones – in their eyes, which are responsible for the perception of movement, light, and color.
Cats use vibrissae, better known as whiskers, to examine such things. But it is not possible for a cat to see anything from far away. The maximum clear sight distance for a cat is eight meters. This is because they only need to see clearly the prey they can reach, and a distance of more than eight meters is too long to start hunting.
Cats are thought to see perfectly well in the dark, but this statement contains probably the biggest myth about cats’ eyesight. The truth is that cats have an excellent twilight vision, but will feel uncomfortable in total darkness, just like humans.
The most important thing for cats is to distinguish movement, and sticks are used for that, but the shades of colors are secondary information. Other photoreceptors – cones – are responsible for color perception in the eyes.
We can’t say for sure what colors cats see, their world is definitely not black and white – but it’s not as colorful and saturated as a human’s.
Owners of domestic cats have more than once noticed that sometimes their pets can stand still and look at one point, or start rushing about the house as if chasing someone or running away from someone. It’s because they can see things from far away that are not available our our eyesight or we just can’t capture the color they see at that moment.