Why do vampires have such good eyesight, and why do “vegetarian” and “regular” vampires have different eye colors? Find out in this week’s episode, where we answer your burning questions by discussing how human eyes work and what works differently in animals with better eyesight than us. Featuring a passionate defense of tofu by Hannah.

Note: Eagles are SWIMMING in cones: "In a human, the fovea has 200,000 cones per millimeter, giving us wonderful vision. In the central fovea of an eagle there are about a MILLION cones per millimeter." It also turns out we were mistaken: bats don't have more cones; they have rods that have evolved to detect UV light which actually compensates from relative color blindness that comes as a result of having few cones (whoops).

Donate:

Quileute Move to Higher Ground Fundraiser

Our intro and outro music:

In the Gloaming - American Quartet (1910)

Links:

Disturbing artist rendition of a human with eagle eyes

Eye shape and impaired vision

Vision overview (god bless hank)

Diagram of an eye

Why goats have horizontal pupils

Bat vision

More bat vision

More more bats

Echolocation

Owls

Cat vision

Eye color variation in humans and domesticated animals

Orange and gold eyes

Albinism and red eyes

Birds with red eyes

Malaga tourist site