![]() ![]() They have a much wider field of vision than humans, and their night vision is six times better than ours. Relatively speaking, cats have very big eyes compared with other mammals, and they don't waste a scrap of light. Cats have also been used to predict tides.Ĭats can't see in complete darkness any more than we can, but they do make a good job out of poor light. In China, cats were used as a timepiece - although not, obviously, as a wristwatch. Consequently, the cat became associated with the ebb and flow of time. ![]() Minnaloushe doesn't know that - but lots of other people had noted that cats' eyes change like the moon and the sun. ![]() WB Yeats wrote that the cat was "the nearest kin of the moon", adding, "Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils will pass from change to change, and that from round to crescent, from crescent to round they range?" Celtic tradition held that cats' eyes were a portal to another world. The ancient Egyptians believed that the nocturnal gleam in the eye of a cat was a ray of sunshine, and symbolised the sun god, Ra, who exuded light even in the darkness of the underworld. The cat's characteristic, ever-changing eyes are behind much of this mystique. Of course, our own pupils change size, too, but our ocular repertoire does not stretch to the vertical slits that are such a distinctive feline trait (although novelty cats' eyes contact lenses do exist, if that's the look you're after).Īlthough cats themselves are neither superstitious nor religious, they have attracted more than their fair share of folklore, and been closely associated with both gods and demons. But cats' eyes also have an adjustable wax and wane feature. Cats aren't the only creatures to have eyes that glow in the dark they come as standard in many nocturnal animals. ![]()
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