Who has the sharpest night vision? Color vision in animals Who has the best vision.
If you say that the cat, you are mistaken
Humans can see well in the dark, but nocturnal animals like cats will give us a hundred points ahead. But who is the owner of the most sensitive eyes?
The human eye is one of the most amazing achievements of evolution. He is able to see small dust particles and huge mountains, near and far, in full color. Working in tandem with a powerful processor in the form of a brain, the eyes allow a person to distinguish between movement and recognize people by their faces.
One of the most impressive features of our eyes is so well developed that we don't even notice it. When we enter from bright light into a semi-dark room, the level of illumination of the environment drops sharply, but the eyes adapt to this almost instantly. As a result of evolution, we have adapted to see in poor light.
But on our planet there are living beings who see in the dark much better than humans. Try reading a newspaper in deep twilight: black letters merge with a white background into a blurry gray spot in which you can’t understand anything. But a cat in a similar situation would not experience any problems - of course, if she could read.
But even cats, despite the habit of hunting at night, see in the dark not the best. Creatures with the sharpest night vision have evolved unique visual organs that allow them to capture literally grains of light. Some of these creatures are able to see in conditions where, from the point of view of our understanding of physics, nothing can be seen in principle.
To compare night vision acuity, we will use lux - these units measure the amount of light per square meter. The human eye performs well in bright sunlight, where illumination can exceed 10,000 lux. But we can see with just one lux - about as much light there is on a dark night.
Domestic cat ( Felis catus): 0.125 lux
Photo from www.listofimages.com
To see, cats need eight times less light than humans. Their eyes are generally similar to ours, but their device has several features that allow it to work well in the dark.
Cat's eyes, like human ones, consist of three main components: the pupil - the hole through which light enters; lens - focusing lens; and the retina, the sensitive screen onto which the image is projected.
In humans, the pupils are round, while in cats, they have the shape of an elongated vertical ellipse. During the day, they narrow into slits, and at night they open to a maximum width. The human pupil can also change size, but not in such a wide range.
The lenses of a cat are larger than those of a human, and are able to collect more light. And behind the retina, they have a reflective layer called the tapetum lucidum, also known simply as the "mirror." Thanks to him, the eyes of cats glow in the dark: light passes through the retina and is reflected back. Thus, the light acts on the retina twice, giving the receptors an additional chance to absorb it.
The composition of the retina itself in cats is also different from ours. There are two types of photosensitive cells: cones, which distinguish colors but only work in good light; and sticks - not perceiving color, but working in the dark. Humans have a lot of cones, giving us rich full-color vision, but cats have many more rods: 25 per cone (in humans, the ratio is one to four).
Cats have 350,000 rods per square millimeter of the retina, while humans have only 80,000-150,000. In addition, each neuron extending from the cat's retina transmits signals from about one and a half thousand rods. A weak signal is thus amplified and turned into a detailed image.
This sharp night vision has a downside: during the daytime, cats see in much the same way as people with red-green color blindness. They can tell blue from other colors, but they can't tell the difference between red, brown, and green.
Tarsiers ( Tarsiidae): 0.001 lux
Photo from www.bohol.ph
Tarsiers are tree-dwelling primates found in Southeast Asia. Compared to the rest of their body proportions, they seem to have the most big eyes from all mammals. The body of the tarsier, if you do not take the tail, usually reaches a length of 9-16 centimeters. The eyes are 1.5-1.8 cm in diameter and occupy almost the entire intracranial space.
Tarsiers feed mainly on insects. They hunt early in the morning and late in the evening, with an illumination of 0.001-0.01 lux. Moving along the tops of trees, they must look out for small, well-camouflaged prey in almost complete darkness and at the same time not fall, jumping from branch to branch.
Help them in this eyes, generally similar to human. The tarsier's giant eye lets in a lot of light, and its amount is regulated by strong muscles surrounding the pupil. A large lens focuses the image on the retina, strewn with rods: the tarsier has more than 300 thousand of them per square millimeter, like a cat.
These large eyes have a drawback: tarsiers are not able to move them. As compensation, nature endowed them with necks that turn 180 degrees.
Dung-beetle ( Onitis sp.): 0.001-0.0001 lux
Photo from www.bbc.co.uk
Where there is manure, there are usually dung beetles. They choose the freshest pile of manure and begin to live in it, rolling balls of manure in reserve or digging tunnels under the pile to equip themselves with a pantry. Dung beetles of the genus Onitis fly out in search of dung in different time days.
Their eyes are very different from human ones. The eyes of insects are faceted, they consist of many structural elements - ommatidia.
Beetles flying during the day have ommatidia enclosed in pigmented shells that absorb excess light so that the sun does not blind the insect. The same shell separates each ommatidium from its neighbors. However, in the eyes of nocturnal beetles, these pigment membranes are absent. Therefore, the light collected by many ommatidia can be transmitted to only one receptor, which significantly increases its photosensitivity.
Genus Onitis unites several different types dung beetles. In the eyes of diurnal species there are isolating pigment membranes, the eyes of evening beetles summarize signals from ommatidia, and in nocturnal species, signals from the number of receptors twice as large as those of evening beetles are summarized. Eyes of a nocturnal species Onitis aygulus, for example, are 85 times more sensitive than daylight eyes Onitis belial.
Halictid bees ( Megaloptagenalis): 0.00063 lux
Photo from www.bbc.co.uk
But the rule described above does not always work. Some insects can see in very low light, despite the fact that their visual organs are clearly adapted for daylight.
Eric Warrent and Elmut Kelber of the University of Lund in Sweden found that some bees have pigmented membranes in their eyes that isolate the ommatidia from each other, but they are still excellent at flying and looking for food on a dark night. For example, in 2004, two scientists demonstrated that halictid bees were able to navigate in light 20 times less intense than starlight.
But the eyes of the halictid bee are designed to see well in daylight, and in the course of evolution, the bees had to somewhat adapt their organs of vision. After the retina has absorbed the light, this information is transmitted to the brain via the nerves. At this stage, the signals can be summed to increase the brightness of the image.
These bees have special neurons that connect ommatidia into groups. Thus, signals coming from all the ommatidia in the group are merged together before being sent to the brain. The image is less sharp, but much brighter.
carpenter bee ( Xylocopa tranquebarica): 0.000063 lux
Photo from www.bbc.co.uk
Carpenter bees, found in the mountains called the Western Ghats in southern India, see even better in the dark. They can fly even on moonless nights. “They are able to fly in starlight, on cloudy nights and in strong winds,” says Hema Somanathan of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Thiruvananthapuram.
Somanathan discovered that carpenter bee ommatidia have unusually large lenses, and that the eyes themselves are quite large in proportion to other parts of the body. All this helps to capture more light.
However, this is not enough to explain such excellent night vision. It is possible that carpenter bees also have ommatidia in groups, like their counterparts. Megaloptagenalis.
Carpenter bees don't just fly at night. “I have seen them fly during the day when their nests are being ravaged by predators,” says Somanathan. “If you blind them with a flash of light, then they simply fall, their vision is not able to process a large amount of light. But then they come to their senses and take off again.”
Of all the fauna, carpenter bees seem to have the sharpest night vision. But in 2014, another contender for the championship title appeared.
American cockroach ( Periplaneta americana): less than one photon per second
Screensaver photo from www.activepestsolutionsltd.co.uk
Directly comparing cockroaches with other living things will not work, because their visual acuity is measured differently. However, their eyes are known to be unusually sensitive.
In a series of experiments described in 2014, Matti Väkström of the Finnish University of Oulu and colleagues looked at how individual light-sensitive cells in cockroach ommatidia responded to very low light. They inserted the thinnest electrodes made of glass into these cells.
Light consists of photons - massless elementary particles. The human eye needs at least 100 photons to hit it in order to feel anything. However, the receptors in the cockroach's eyes responded to movement, even if each cell received only one photon of light every 10 seconds.
A cockroach has 16,000 to 28,000 green-sensitive receptors in each eye. According to Wekstrom, signals from hundreds or even thousands of these cells are summed up in the dark (recall that up to 1,500 visual rods can work together in a cat). The effect of this summation, according to Vekstrom, is "grand," and it seems that it has no analogues in nature.
“Cockroaches are impressive. Less than a photon per second! Kelber says. “This is the sharpest night vision.”
But bees can beat them in at least one respect: American cockroaches don't fly in the dark. "Flight control is much more difficult - the insect moves quickly, and collision with obstacles is dangerous," comments Kelber. “In that sense, carpenter bees are the most amazing. They are able to fly and forage on moonless nights and still see colors.”
Most animals have organs of vision. Some have eyes close together, improving depth perception. In others, the eyes are far apart, forming a larger field of view and receiving a signal in advance of a possible attack.
There are many types of eyes in the animal kingdom. The human eye is not anatomically similar to the eye of a fly, designed for lightning-fast reaction to movement.
Only a person has the whites of the eyes, showing the mood and emotional background.
Features of the eyes in animals and insects
The chameleon controls its eyes independently of each other. They can look in different directions at the same time.
Goats, mongooses, sheep and octopuses have eyes with rectangular pupils.
The volume of the eyes of an ostrich is greater than the volume of the brain of this bird!
The eyeballs of an owl occupy the entire space of the skull, they rotate with difficulty. The owl compensates for this by turning its neck half a circle to either side.
Some scorpions have up to six pairs of eyes. Many of the spiders are four pairs. Tuatara lizard has three eyes!
Jumping spiders have two main eyes and six auxiliary ones.
Starfish have eyes at the end of each ray and receptors throughout their body. These marine animals can only distinguish between light and dark lighting.
The eye of whales weighs about a kilogram. But the whale sees only at a distance of 1 meter.
A complex system is the eyes of the mantis shrimp. She can see in polarized light, in the optical, IR and UV ranges.
A person will receive such accuracy only using equipment weighing a centner.
Among marine animals, cuttlefish, squid and octopuses have the most perfect vision.
How animals and insects see colors
Cats can't see red. Their colors are not bright. A human has only 4 rods for each cone, while a cat has 25. Therefore, cats see the world as gray.
Dogs see blues and purples clearly, but cannot recognize warm colors such as yellow, orange, and red.
Bulls and cows do not emit red. Torero irritates the animal not with the red color of his cloak, but with sharp movements.
The bee does not distinguish red, it confuses it with green, gray or black. The bee accurately sees yellow, blue, blue-green, blue, violet and purple. Perfectly highlights ultraviolet tones and their corresponding radiation.
How animals and insects see up close, far and sideways
Dogs have great distance vision, but poor near vision. A dog's visual acuity is about 60% weaker than a human's. But dogs easily determine "by eye" the distance.
An eagle's visual acuity is twice as strong as a human's.
The falcon can see an object 10 cm in size from a height of 1500 m.
The vulture sees small rodents from a distance of up to 5 kilometers.
The dragonfly is one of the most vigilant insects. She sees a match head at a distance of a meter. The dragonfly eye is made up of 30,000 individual biological chambers. Each camera captures one point, then the array of images in the brain is added to a single object. The dragonfly eye captures up to 300 images per second.
Frogs see only moving objects, considering them as possible prey.
Thanks to horizontal and rectangular pupils, goats and bison see 240 °. The horse's field of view is 350%.
The viewing angle in cats is 190°, while in dogs it is only 40°.
Each person has a unique pattern of the iris. Along with fingerprints, the iris pattern is used to identify a specific person.
An ordinary human eye, with all the richness of its functions, weighs less than a bullet for a 7.62x54 cartridge. The bullet weighs 9 grams, the eye is only 8.
Diameter eyeball in most adults it is approximately 24 mm.
The least common eye color in humans is green. Occurs in 2% of cases.
At birth, a person has an indeterminate eye color. The eyes acquire a permanent color after two to three years.
The human eye distinguishes up to 5 million different shades of color, having a huge number of light-sensitive cells (over 130 million).
Eye color is determined by melanin, a pigment in the iris. A low concentration of pigment contributes to the acquisition of light cold tones - blue, gray, green. With a high concentration of melanin, the iris turns black or brown. The absence of melanin in the iris is only in albinos.
The primary colors perceived by humans are red, blue and green. Their different saturation allows you to get all the color options visible to the eye.
For every hundredth person, the colors of the iris of the left and right eyes differ.
Color blindness is detected in 8% of men and only 1% of women.
In Europe, the brightest eyes are among the Swedes, Finns, Poles and the inhabitants of the Baltic states. Most dark eyes- Yugoslavs, Turks and Portuguese.
About night vision
Of the birds, owls see best in the dark. Owls accurately see mice or squirrels even without the moon. During the day, owls see poorly, so they hide in secluded places.
Cats see in the dark better people. At dusk and at night, the pupils of cats dilate up to 14 mm. In humans, the diameter of the pupil, even at night, is no more than 8 mm. In bright light, cats instinctively close their eyes to avoid damaging the retina instinctively.
The human eye has 150 eyelashes on each eyelid.
Sneezing is always accompanied by squinting of the eyes, as this develops a speed of 170 km / h and pressure on the sinuses.
A man blinks every 10 seconds, each blink takes from one to three seconds. For a day, the duration of the blinking of men takes about an hour.
Women blink about twice as often as men.
Women cry about 40 times a year, men - about 6.
The eyes adjust to the dark in about an hour. During this time, the sensitivity of the eyes to light grows thousands of times. The sudden transition from darkness to bright light causes discomfort.
The human eye is a complex biological organ that receives visual information from the outside and transmits it further to the brain. The high speed of processing the information received allows you to respond to sudden changes.
The inner surface of the eye is lined with retinal tissue. Its function resembles a film in a camera or a digital matrix of a mobile phone.
The cornea is an element of the eye that changes shape and focuses on objects at different distances. The cornea is transparent, it is covered by the iris, which is a colored film. In the center of the iris is the pupil through which light passes to the retina. The pupil regulates the amount of incoming light.
In the human eye, where the optic nerve passes through the retina, there is a small blind spot. This feature is compensated by information from the other eye.
Eye transplant is not possible. When separating optic nerve from the brain, the first one immediately dies. However, the cornea of the eye is successfully transplanted.
Tears in a newborn appear in the second month of life.
Ordinary people recognize thousands of color shades, but artists recognize millions.
Circles under the eyes indicate dehydration, and bags indicate kidney problems.
For the first few days, babies can only see 25 cm into the distance.
When reading quickly, the eyes get tired less than when reading slowly.
Illumination of the eyes with red increases the sensitivity to darkness for half an hour.
We all know how important our eyes are. We receive most of the information, experiences and memories through the eyes. And, of course, we can enjoy the exceptional creations of nature that surround us. Some animals also have incredible or even more amazing eyes than in humans. Here are the Top 10 Most Amazing Eyes in the Animal Kingdom.
The frog's large eyes are remarkable from several angles. First of all, this amphibian spends a decent amount of time in the water. To swim in water filled with debris, frogs have three eyelids - two transparent and one translucent eyelid. This translucent membrane can close completely to allow the frog to protect its eyes underwater.
The position of the frog's eyes also gives it a better field of view. The eyes are located on the sides of the head to get full review 360 degrees. Frogs can even see what's going on outside when they dive into the water.
is a small primate found in the forests of Southeast Asia. Its most striking feature is its large eyes, which are up to 1.6 cm in diameter. Compared to body size, these are the largest eyes of any mammal in the world. Just like an owl's, the tarsier's eyes cannot move. Because they are fixed in the skull.
Instead, tarsiers can move their heads 180 degrees to the left and right. This helps them to know what is going on around them. They are nocturnal animals that only become active at night. But their large eyes give them excellent night vision. In addition, they have an acute sense of hearing. Both of these qualities help tarsiers locate prey in low light conditions.
The hammerhead shark has one of the strangest yet interesting heads, a flattened hammerhead with wide-set eyes. But research has shown that this strange head has a good purpose. It provides the hammerhead shark with much better vision than other shark species. More precisely, such widely spaced eyes give them excellent vision and exceptional depth perception.
The cuttlefish is an incredible sea creature that can change its color instantly. This allows cuttlefish to quickly hide from predators by mingling with environment. This wonderful power of cuttlefish is the help of specialized skin cells and their incredible vision. They have strange "w" shaped pupils that give them a wider range of vision. Interestingly, they can even see what is behind them.
In addition, they can detect polarized light with incredible accuracy. Even the slightest change in the angle of polarized light. This gives the cuttlefish a clear idea of what exactly is going on around them.
Do the rectangular pupils of a goat seem strange to you? But at the same time, they provide impressive vision. For a grazing animal such as a goat, this is the most sought after strength.
Because, having good eyesight, a goat has a better chance of escaping from a predator. Its rectangular pupils provide detailed panoramic vision. This helps the goat detect danger from a distance. In addition, effective eye rotation also helps to detect strange movements in the field, even while grazing. Thus, they have enough time to escape from a predatory animal.
There are 1,500 different species of geckos living in warm climate regions of the world. Most of them are nocturnal animals. To adapt to this lifestyle, they have impressive eyesight. To be precise, their eyes are 350 times more sensitive than human vision and color vision threshold. Geckos can even see colors in low light with amazing quality. This is a rare power in the animal kingdom.
One of the amazing things about dragonflies is their large globular eyes. Each eye of a dragonfly is made of 30,000 facets and is located in different directions. The result is incredible 360-degree vision. This allows them to detect even the slightest movement in their surroundings.
Dragonflies can also detect ultraviolet and polarized light, which are outside of our visual spectrum. All these qualities play a huge role in the navigation of dragonflies.
Owls have very interesting, large front eyes. This positioning of the eyes is of great advantage to owls - an incredible binocular vision or the ability to see an object with both eyes with greater depth perception. Even animals and birds that have eyes on the sides of their heads do not have such excellent vision.
Surprisingly, instead of eyeballs, the owl's eyes are tube-shaped. Also, their eyes cannot rotate like ours. But they can move their head 270 degrees in the left and right directions. In this way, owls get a much wider vision. To adapt to their nocturnal lifestyle, owls also have excellent night vision, which brings millions of light-sensitive retinal rods.
Chameleons are so famous for their ability to change colors. But their visual system is just as amazing as their ability to change color. These reptiles can move their eyes independently. That is, they can focus on two different objects in two different directions at the same time. This incredible chameleon eye power provides superior 360-degree vision. Chameleons can also focus on objects with incredible speed.
The mantis shrimp has the most fantastic visual system in the animal kingdom. We humans have three color receptors. But this unusual crustacean has 12 different color receptors. These mantis shrimp see so many colors we can't even comprehend.
Beautiful eyes can also turn independently from each other in different directions at the same time. Eye rotation capacity is measured up to 70 degrees. This provides a wider view of this little creature. In addition, the mantis shrimp, like other animals with exceptional vision, can detect infrared, ultraviolet, and polarized light.
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Many pet owners are interested in what and how their pets see. Can they distinguish the color of their favorite toy or master's slippers?According to some parameters, the vision of animals is more perfect than that of humans, but in terms of color difference it is clearly inferior to its owners.
Visual acuity in animals is much higher than in humans. It is known that the visual acuity of raptors is 3-8 times higher than ours. An eagle can see a gopher from a height of several hundred meters, a peregrine falcon sees a dove from a kilometer away. The buzzard unmistakably looks for a green grasshopper in green grass from a height of 100 meters. Visual acuity in dogs is estimated to be 20 to 40% higher. Interestingly, animals, especially carnivores, are much better at distinguishing moving objects.
Most animals see well in the dark. This is because the photoreceptor cells in the retina focus, rather than scatter, light, which allows nocturnal animals to distinguish between a few photons of very faint light. The glow of the eyes of animals in the dark is explained by the presence of a special reflective layer under the retina called the tapetum. It is thanks to him that we observe the brightly glowing eyes of animals at night, for example, in the bright light of car headlights.
The field of view of animals depends on the location of the eyes on the muzzle, the shape of the skull. The eyes are often located not in the frontal plane, as in humans, but, as it were, on both sides of the head, they are convex and protrude forward. All this allows you to have a wider view (lateral vision). For example, dogs are able to cover an angle of view of 250 degrees, and a person is only 150 degrees. The record holder in panoramic vision is the woodcock bird, in which it is almost circular. The dove has a 340-degree field of view. Chameleons and seahorses can look in two directions at once, this amazing ability they owe it to the fact that their eyes move independently of each other.
The color perception of animals is inferior to the human. Among vertebrates, the presence of color vision has been proven in fish, frogs, turtles, lizards, and most birds. Excellent color vision in bees, dragonflies and other insects. Dogs have poor color vision - they are able to slightly distinguish between red and blue colors. Color vision has not been proven in ungulates. Nocturnal animals do not have color vision.
Facts about vision in animals
- In a penguin, the cornea of the eye is not spherical, like in humans and many other animals, but flat, which allows you to see in the water without distortion.
- Snakes do not have eyelids, and their eyes are constantly covered with a transparent elastic membrane.
- In a fly, the speed of changing images is 300 frames per second, which is 5-6 times faster than in humans.
- The cockroach notices a movement of 0.0002 mm, so it is not easy to catch it.
eye diseases in animals
In animals, the same eye diseases occur as in humans, but, of course, there are certain features associated with both clinical manifestations, and with the difficulties of timely diagnosis and treatment.For the correct diagnosis of eye diseases in animals, the anamnesis is very important - the information that the owner reports - when the symptoms appeared, what they were associated with, how the animal behaved. If necessary, in addition to the examination, all methods of ophthalmological examination are used: examination of the fundus (ophthalmoscopy), measurement intraocular pressure(tonometry), ultrasound of the eyeball, tests with vital dyes (fluorescein test), etc.
The most common in dogs and cats are conjunctivitis - inflammation of the mucous membrane of the eyeball. With conjunctivitis, animals experience discomfort in the eyes, a feeling foreign body, res. With severe inflammation, animals behave restlessly, rub their eyes with their paws, which can lead to injury to the cornea with their claws.
The mucous membrane of the eye is swollen, reddened, there may be hemorrhages, in the corners of the eyes, discharge of a different nature - mucous, purulent, foamy.
Conjunctivitis in animals, like in humans, can be of various origins - viral, bacterial, allergic, caused by exposure to physical or chemical factors. The specifics of the clinical course will depend on the cause of conjunctivitis - the nature of the discharge, the presence of lacrimation, etc. Therefore, it is better not to self-medicate your pets, but to consult a veterinarian. For the treatment of uncomplicated conjunctivitis, the use of certain eye drops. Very often there is a sluggish allergic conjunctivitis associated with the nutritional habits of the animal. Often owners do not even go to the veterinarians if the dog or cat has only a small amount of discharge in the corners of the eyes or watery eyes. In such cases, you need to consult a specialist and, most likely, adjust your pet's diet.
Corneal keratitis and ulcers in animals most often develop after an eye injury. At the same time, a limited decrease in the transparency of the cornea can be seen with the naked eye, the inflammatory focus on the cornea can be covered with gray or yellow coating(fibrin or pus), the eye itself is reddened, there may be discharge of a different nature. Keratitis or ulcer enough serious illness, be sure to urgently contact a veterinarian, preferably a veterinary ophthalmologist. In addition to local treatment (drops, ointment) are likely to be prescribed medications for oral use - antibiotics, anti-inflammatory drugs, it may be necessary to inject under the conjunctiva of the eyeball.
Many breeds of dogs often have a hereditary disease - corneal dystrophy. This is usually a bilateral, non-inflammatory disease in which a cloudy area forms on the cornea in the form of a white spot or arc. Wherein general state the animal does not suffer, vision with small lesions does not deteriorate significantly. Treatment of this pathology is not effective.
Quite often, dogs and cats, especially aging ones, have an incorrect position of the eyelids - inversion or eversion, there may be prolapse or growth of the lacrimal gland, the so-called third eyelid, located in the inner corner of the eye. Inversion of the eyelid is accompanied by abnormal growth of eyelashes - towards the eyeball, while the eyelashes irritate the eye, injure the surface of the cornea. As a rule, with torsion of the eyelid and with hyperplasia of the glands of the third eyelid, surgery– correction of the position of the eyelid and fixation of the prolapsed lacrimal gland to the periosteum zygomatic bone or its removal in neoplasms.
If you notice that one of the animal's eyes does not glow in the dark or in photographs, or glows much less than the other, or the pupil "turned white", most likely your pet has a cataract - a clouding of the lens. With clouding of the lens, vision gradually decreases until the sensation of light. Treatment of cataracts is only surgical - removal of the clouded lens. If there are cataracts in both eyes, then surgery is definitely necessary. If there is a cataract in only one eye, then the owner himself decides on the operation. It is necessary to take into account the age of the animal, since in most cases cataract is an age-related pathology, the patient's physical ability to withstand general anesthesia (narcosis). It is also necessary to take into account the material costs of surgical treatment.
The most difficult for timely diagnosis are diseases of the retina - various forms of degeneration. There are no eye changes visible to the wearer. The animal loses sight gradually and is well oriented in familiar surroundings. As a rule, a veterinary ophthalmologist is consulted in the late stages, when vision is almost completely lost. Retinal dystrophies are hereditary diseases, often characteristic of certain breeds of dogs and cats. To diagnose the disease, it is necessary to study the fundus - ophthalmoscopy, which reveals certain changes in the retina, blood vessels, and optic nerve head. There is no cure as such. Healthy dogs may have a DNA test to check for hereditary retinal degenerations of one type or another. This is done when using dogs for breeding, as dogs with retinal dystrophy cannot be used for breeding due to their genetic disease.
Taurine-deficient retinopathy in cats is a degeneration of the retina in cats with a deficiency of taurine, an essential amino acid that enters the animal's body only with food. The disease is caused by improper feeding or metabolic disorders. If a cat is deficient in taurine for several months, then complete blindness develops. The prevention and treatment of this disease in cats is a balanced feeding of ready-made feeds (the content of taurine in the feed goes with the daily needs of the animal) or the addition of supplements to the cat's diet, including Taurine.
It happens that eye pathology is just a manifestation of a systemic disease. For example, conjunctivitis with chlamydia or mycoplasmosis, cataract with diabetes, uveitis with renal hypertension, etc. In such cases, treatment is carried out in a complex, taking into account the specifics of the disease.
