this is moreso an observation I made while googling around and I don’t really have a reason but here’s what an article had to say:
Interestingly, large felines like tigers and lions do not have slit-shaped pupils but round-shaped. The reason for this is not exactly defined, but it is thought to be due to their greater height off the ground, their behavior as active foragers rather than ambush predators, or differences in their circadian rhythms compared to cats.
https://www.catster.com/lifestyle/why-do-cats-have-slit-pupils/
Labelling the Flash Reflection is really funny to me. It’s sort of like finding Saddam Hussein in places he shouldn’t be or a diagram of a cat brain which just shows smaller cats in a control room.
No, it make sense, not everyone realizes that it is actually an artefact and not part of the eye.
And a good thing they drew it in, then labeled it as irrelevant, too! Can you imagine how confusing the diagram would be otherwise!?
It’s there because it’s visible on a lot of cat photos.
It’s visible on human photos too, but when I go to my doctor’s office the diagram of the human eye doesn’t have it. That is a really strange thing to include in the diagram. I like it though, strange is good.
But now I wonder what the lighter green stuff in the bottom third of the eye is supposed to represent.
The slits are an adaptation for hunting in the grass. Large cats stand above the grass and so have eyes more like ours.
Pallas’s cats (manul) seems to be an anomaly then, they are about the size of the domestic cat and also doesn’t have slit pupils.
In fact, they are the only ones that don’t. They are so old, they existed before the slit eye evolved in small cats!
Ok. First of all, that’s a cool ass looking cat. I’d never heard of them before and that has brought some joy to my already pretty joyful morning.
Second of all, you’d think that were there some pressure to do so, they would have evolved similar features if it was an advantage due to their size yeah? It’s gotta be an environmental thing or some combination of the two. The slit eyes tend to blur the sides of your vision but bring things directly in your line of sight in to more clarity.
So, better to hunt small things with?
Manul
I love looking at big cats for this reason. There’s something so cute about them having people-ish (or dog-ish, as you please) eyes.
You knew this. Just imagine the tiger with slit pupils and your brain will “wtf”. Same with panthers, lions, snow leopards, mountain lions…
