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Why do animal eyes have pupils of different shapes?

Banks, Martin S.; Sprague, William W.; Schmoll, Jurgen; Parnell, Jared A.Q.; Love, Gordon D.

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Authors

Martin S. Banks

William W. Sprague

Jared A.Q. Parnell

Gordon D. Love



Abstract

There is a striking correlation between terrestrial species’ pupil shape and ecological niche (that is, foraging mode and time of day they are active). Species with vertically elongated pupils are very likely to be ambush predators and active day and night. Species with horizontally elongated pupils are very likely to be prey and to have laterally placed eyes. Vertically elongated pupils create astigmatic depth of field such that images of vertical contours nearer or farther than the distance to which the eye is focused are sharp, whereas images of horizontal contours at different distances are blurred. This is advantageous for ambush predators to use stereopsis to estimate distances of vertical contours and defocus blur to estimate distances of horizontal contours. Horizontally elongated pupils create sharp images of horizontal contours ahead and behind, creating a horizontally panoramic view that facilitates detection of predators from various directions and forward locomotion across uneven terrain.

Citation

Banks, M. S., Sprague, W. W., Schmoll, J., Parnell, J. A., & Love, G. D. (2015). Why do animal eyes have pupils of different shapes?. Science Advances, 1(7), Article e1500391. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1500391

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jun 28, 2015
Online Publication Date Aug 7, 2015
Publication Date Aug 7, 2015
Deposit Date Dec 15, 2015
Publicly Available Date Dec 15, 2015
Journal Science Advances
Publisher American Association for the Advancement of Science
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 1
Issue 7
Article Number e1500391
DOI https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1500391

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Copyright Statement
2015 © The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.





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