What horses and humans see: a comparative review

Murphy, J., Hall, C.A. ORCID: 0000-0001-5916-311X and Arkins, S., 2009. What horses and humans see: a comparative review. International Journal of Zoology. ISSN 1687-8485

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Abstract

Adaptations of the mammalian eye have tailored each to its own particular ecological niche. On the one hand, it would appear that the horse is best served by a system that can keep "half an eye" on everything, while the human benefits from focussing on more specific aspects of the visual array. By adapting a range of techniques, originally used to assess human visual ability, it has been possible to compare the human visual experience with that of the horse. In general, the results of the majority of these comparative studies indicate that the visual capabilities of the horse are broadly inferior to the human equivalents in acuity, accommodation, and colour vision. However, both the horse and human abilities to judge distance and depth perception may be quite comparable while equine vision is certainly superior to that of human's under scotopic conditions. Individual variation in visual ability, which is routinely taken for granted in humans, is also likely to occur in the horse. Such variation would undoubtedly affect equine performance, particularly in terms of expectation of athletic competitive outcomes in modern equitation.

Item Type: Journal article
Publication Title: International Journal of Zoology
Creators: Murphy, J., Hall, C.A. and Arkins, S.
Publisher: Hindawi Publishing Corporation
Date: 2009
ISSN: 1687-8485
Identifiers:
NumberType
10.1155/2009/721798DOI
Divisions: Schools > School of Animal, Rural and Environmental Sciences
Record created by: EPrints Services
Date Added: 09 Oct 2015 09:54
Last Modified: 09 Jun 2017 13:13
URI: https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/4567

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