What if humans had eagle vision ?

Ever wondered how it would feel if you had the vision of an eagle? If you could see what was going on through the eyes of a raptor, would you be excited?

If you swapped your eyes for an eagle's, you could see a bug crawling on the ground from the roof of a 10-story building. You could make out the expressions on football players' faces from the worst seats in the arena. Objects directly in your line of sight would appear magnified, and everything would be brilliantly colored, rendered in an inconceivable array of shades.

And yes, the more we know about eagle vision the more we desire to attain it. Thanks to the technological developments, some aspects to this vision can be achieved while for the rest we can do nothing apart from dreaming in its colors.

Eagle's Eyes

Eagles and other birds of prey can see four to five times farther than the average human can, meaning they have 20/5 or 20/4 vision under ideal viewing conditions. Scientists have to cook up special experiments to judge eagles' eyesight — your optometrist's alphabet eye charts are of no use, after all — and one common setup involves training the birds to fly down a long tunnel toward two TV screens. One screen displays a striped pattern, and the birds get a treat when they land on it. Scientists test their acuity by varying the width of the stripes and determining from what distance the eagles begin to veer in the correct direction.




On top of sharp focus and a central magnifier, eagles, like all birds, also have superior color vision. They see colors as more vivid than we do, can discriminate between more shades, and can also see ultraviolet light — an ability that evolved to help them detect the UV-reflecting urine trails of small prey. But there's no way to know what these extra colors, including ultraviolet, look like. "Suppose you wanted to describe the color of a tomato to someone who was born blind. You couldn't do it. We can't even guess what they're subjective sensation of ultraviolet light is."

Life with 20/5 vision

Eagle vision wouldn't change how we perform most daily activities — such as reading computer screens or the newspaper, or finding milk in a crowded refrigerator — but how we perceive the world and use our eyes would certainly be different. It's perhaps easiest to consider our new powers in the context of how eagles use them: for hunting.



On top of the ability to see farther and perceive more colors, we would also have nearly double the field of view. With our eyes angled 30 degrees away from the midline of our faces like an eagle's, we would see almost all the way behind our heads with a 340-degree visual field (compared to normal humans' 180 degree field); this would confer a clear advantage in hunting and self-defense.



Enhanced perception and hunting prowess would likely come with a few drawbacks. "I would say that birds probably have a greater proportion of their brain volume devoted to visual processing than other groups of animals. Now the question of what it comes at the expense of: most birds appear not to have a well-developed sense of smell or taste."

It really would be wonderful to have an eagle's vision if you can afford a few drawbacks. After all your potential would increase and you can wonders!