What does it mean when scientists say “an eagle can see a rabbit in a field from a mile away”. Is their vision automatically more zoomed in? Do they have better than 20/20 vision? Is their vision just clearer?

Question

What does it mean when scientists say “an eagle can see a rabbit in a field from a mile away”. Is their vision automatically more zoomed in? Do they have better than 20/20 vision? Is their vision just clearer?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Not zoomed in, just extremely sharp. Their eyes are also capable of sending more information to the brain per unit time.

An eagle’s field of view is actually *less* “zoomed in” than ours. Eagles can see 340 degrees around them while humans can only see about 180 (sometimes a tad bit more). But just the sheer amount of photo receptive cells in an eagles eye and their ability to process more visual input is what makes their sight so much better at a distance than ours.