Rats see the world very differently from us, researchers say, because they’re able to keep the world above them in permanent view—but apparently can’t merge the views from both eyes into one image. With hawks and the like trailing rodents at every opportunity, nature seems to have just decided the first ability is important enough to sacrifice the second, said the scientists. Describing themselves as totally surprised by the discovery, they found that the rodents move their eyes in opposite directions, not together like us, when running around. Their precise eye movement, which depends on the change in the head position, prevents a “fusion” of both visual fields, the researchers added. With people, “both our eyes move together and always follow the same object,” while counteracting head movements, said neurobiologist Jason Kerr of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany, one of the researchers. “In rats, on the other hand, the eyes generally move in opposite directions.”
Posted on: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 20:19:55 +0000
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