What animal has the best eyesight?
Birds of prey such as eagles have some of the sharpest eyesight of any animal, able to spot small prey from more than a kilometer away. The mantis shrimp has the most complex color vision.
Eagles have a very high density of light-sensing cells in their retinas and two areas of sharp focus in each eye. Their vision is estimated to be four to five times sharper than a person's. A golden eagle can spot a rabbit from about 3 kilometers away, which helps it hunt from high in the sky.
The mantis shrimp, a colorful marine crustacean, has between 12 and 16 types of photoreceptors, compared with three in humans. It can detect ultraviolet and polarized light. However, studies suggest its brain processes colors in a simpler way, so it may not tell apart similar shades better than we can.
Other remarkable eyes
Owls see well in very low light, and cats need only about one-sixth of the light humans need to see. Dragonflies have nearly 360-degree vision thanks to about 30,000 lenses in each compound eye. Chameleons can move each eye independently to look in two directions at once.
Did You Know?
The colossal squid has the largest eyes of any known animal, about 27 centimeters across, roughly the size of a soccer ball.