To understand how certain pupil shapes can benefit different types of animals, physicist Gordon Love and colleagues at the University Durham in the UK, along with psychologist Martin Banks and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, created computer models of the optical properties of different pupil shapes. This vertical group includes some foxes, cats and snakes. Furthermore, animals that hunt at night, or both day and night, tend to have vertical pupils. The study reveals that herbivorous prey animals such as deer and zebras are likely to have horizontal pupils, while predators actively hunting during the day – like cheetahs and coyotes – usually have circular pupils. By modelling how differently shaped pupils collect light, researchers in the UK and US have argued that the shape of an animal’s pupil – the aperture through which light enters the eye – is related to whether that animal is predator or prey.
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