Do cats have a much better night vision than us?
How do cats manage to jump around and wriggle their way out of obstacles and traps in the dark, when we can barely spot a mountain from a mole? As it turns out, our eyes are trained to see more vibrant colours during daytime. Cats, however, outdo us under the cover of darkness. They possess superior night vision, apart from a wider peripheral vision.
A remarkable differentiator between human vision and cat vision is in the retina, a cluster of cells behind the cornea and lens that have photoreceptors. Light rays that enter through the cornea get converted into electrical signals thanks to these photoreceptors. The signals duly get processed by nerve cells, then passed on to the brain for them to get converted into the conventional images.
Felines are blessed with a wider field of view – about 20 degrees more than our 180-degree view. While they can’t see fine detail or rich colour, cats do have a superior ability to see in the dark because of the high number of rods in their retina that are sensitive to dim light. These rods enable cats to see using roughly one-sixth the amount of light that their human masters require. Their extra rod cells also allow cats to sense motion in the dark much better than their human companions can.
Another interesting fact is that cats are a crepuscular species. This nature makes them active during twilight hours – at dawn and dusk, explains a Live Science article. “That may be why they need such good night vision. Their eyes have six to eight times more rod cells, which are more sensitive to low light, than humans do.”
Apart from that, the article further elaborates, cats’ elliptical eye shape and larger corneas and tapetum, a layer of tissue that may reflect light back to the retina, help gather more light as well. The tapetum may also shift the wavelengths of light that cats see, making prey or other objects silhouetted against a night sky more prominent, according to Kerry Ketring, a veterinarian with the All Animal Eye Clinic in Whitehall, Michigan.
