Can eagles “zoom in” with their eyes like it’s a camera lens?

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I’ve always wondered whether eagles (and hawks, falcons, really any bird of prey that relies on their vision to hunt) can “zoom in” with their eyes just like it’s a camera lens. Because whenever I watch a nature documentary about eagles, the camera technique they show is that of a camera zoom, zooming in towards the prey hundreds of meters away.

I know that with human eyes, we can’t optically zoom in with our eyes. Sure, our eyes can focus on stuff really close to us, making the background blurry, but it’s not like we can “zoom in” to stuff far in the distance.

So to reiterate, can eagles zoom in to view objects in the distance like their eyes are a camera lens or binoculars with zoom?

In: Biology

8 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Put your hand up in front of.your face and focus on it.

After that, leave your hand up, but focus on something behind your hand that is a good distance away from you.

Notice how your hand loses focus but you gain clear focus of whatever is behind your hand.

That’s exactly what eagles do, just to much, much greater degree.

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