We do this too – try walking down stairs with one eye shut.Why might being an ambush predator dictate the shape of your pupil? Because to pounce on a mouse, a cat must be superb at judging distance – and that’s where a slit-shaped pupil can help, says Banks. Their brain compares the slightly different images relayed from the left and right eye to help estimate distance – a process called stereopsis. Like most predators, a cat’s eyes face forward. Those that chase down their prey, such as cheetahs and wolves, tend to have circular pupils. Banks’ study shows the slit-shaped pupil is most often found in animals that hunt by day and night, and especially among predators that ambush their prey – including cats, snakes and crocodiles. The slit-shaped pupil, with its remarkable light control, is how a cat can hunt in near-darkness, and also in bright daylight, says Ron Douglas, an animal vision biologist at City University London. By contrast human pupils expand by a factor of 15. Overall a cat’s pupils can expand by 135-fold and can perform like built-in night vision goggles. Like opening or closing theatre curtains, muscles on either side of the cat’s pupil open the slit wide or cause it to narrow. A cat’s pupilĭepending on the light, the shape of a domestic cat’s pupil changes from vertical slit to alluring almond to almost fully round. Their findings were published in Science Advances in August. Martin Banks from the University of California in Berkeley and colleagues examined the eyes of more than 200 land animals and found their status as predator or prey was correlated to the shape of their pupils. and/or may serve to merely intimidate other males.Ever wondered why cat eyes have vertical slit-shaped pupils, while sheep have horizontal bars? A recent study suggests it has to do with their place in the food chain. This suggests that these particular sexually dimorphic ocular traits, overlapping but not the same as the concept of 'hunter eyes', do not play much of role in physical attractiveness in both sexes.ĭeep-set hunter eyes may be an evolutionary adaptation for combat, hunting and male intrasexual competition, protecting men's eyes from fists, claws, sticks etc. As well as being sexually attractive, hunter eyes in women may be associated with perceptions of greater sexual availability, possibly driving men's attraction to the women that have these kind of eyes.Ī 2023 study found that the width-to-height ratio of the eyes and level of exposure of the sclera were not significant associated with attractiveness judgements in European men or women. Their eyes impart a distinctive look on those that bear them, suggesting they are generally considered to be alluring.ĭespite them likely being a masculine sexually dimorphic trait, hunter eyes are also generally seen as an attractive feature among women, with many prominent actresses and female entertainers possessing this feature. Men with hunter eyes look highly dominant and threatening, with a piercing, predatory gaze. Nonetheless, individuals that are generally considered objectively attractive, such as male models, often appear to have pronounced hunter eyes. These features possibly play even less of a role in driving actual mating outcomes for men. Research on facial masculinity suggests that the role of most facially masculine features are generally overstated as an aspect of facial attractiveness for men, as most of these features do not play much of a role in driving female's evaluations of the attractiveness of male faces. Scientifically, it is an open question to which extent hunter eyes are directly attractive to women. Women's round and cute eyes are closer to 'prey eyes' however, women have a very slightly smaller interpupillary distance than men, rather than their eyes being peripherally positioned like in prey animals. Though, the correlation between the eye's width-to-height ratio and global facial masculinity was close to zero and non-significant in one study, suggesting it is not uncommon for men to have hunter eyes without having a particularly masculine face in general, despite the feature itself being sexually dimorphic. The sex of human skulls can also be identified based on whether the eye sockets are more round or more square. The same sex difference has been found in Asians and Africans. In Caucasians, men's eyes have a greater width-to-height ratio than women's, while women's eyes are rounder, i.e. a high width-to-height ratio (with a low level of vertical scleral show) is considered the essential aspect of hunter eyes. Hunter eyes are a sexually dimorphic trait. 4 More examples of hunter and 'prey eyes'.
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