Cats are wonderful hunters and amazingly beautiful pets. Many, probably, more than once paid attention to the fact that cats' eyes glow in the dark. Why is this happening and what is so unusual about these animals?
Like most other predators, the cat prefers night hunting. Thanks to acute hearing, sense of smell, vision, as well as a completely silent gait, the animal moves confidently even in the darkest room. The slightest extraneous sound, and in one jump the cat successfully overtakes its prey.
Good vision allows the animal to see in the dark. During the daytime, the pupils of cats narrow so much that they turn into narrow slits. With the onset of darkness, they expand and absorb even the faintest stream of light. At night, the pupils of cats can reach up to 14 millimeters, or even more.
The eyes of a cat, like that of a person, are directed forward, which allows it to focus both eyes on some specific object, and calculate the distance to it with the slightest accuracy. Therefore, sometimes a few seconds are enough for a cat to make a jump and catch a gaping prey. Those spaces that the animal sees with both eyes overlap 45% from the front, which makes it possible to see the same object with both eyes at the same time.
If you shine a flashlight on a cat in the dark, you can see its eyes start to glow. This is due to the fact that the back surface of the cat's entire eyeball is coated with a special substance that vaguely resembles polished silver. It is this that reflects any ray of light that falls on the animal's eye. The reflected light is not scattered around, but returns exactly to the point of its origin.
Unlike humans, a cat sees the whole world as pale and gray. She cannot distinguish between colors, because many of them are simply not available for feline vision. For example, there is no shade of red for cats at all. However, this does not bring any inconvenience to fluffy "purrs", since their main prey are mice and birds, and they themselves are gray in color.
