• Question: Why do cats eyes look like slits?

    Asked by anonymouse88 to Hywel, Joseph, Patience, Poonam, Rachael on 16 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Joseph Cook

      Joseph Cook answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      I think this is because cats are well suited to hunting in the dark at night, which means they need to have very sensitive eyes. So in the daytime, they need to contract their eyes to a slit to protect them from the bright light.

    • Photo: Poonam Kaushik

      Poonam Kaushik answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      Our eyes have round apertures through which the light passes to the retina where the light is captured. The aperture (the iris) size can be controlled to control the amount of light received. When it is really bright we tend to squint. This reduces the light entering the eye further by in effect reducing the aperture further. Cats are better at this than us. Their aperture is a vertical slit, which narrows to control the light passing into the eye. Further control can be effected by closing the eye lid. This has the effect of drawing a blind down over the slit blocking light passing at the top and bottom of the slit. Fancy stuff indeed, but they need this facility due to the extra sensitivity to light as described above (the laser eye effect).This tells us that cats are nocturnal hunters.

    • Photo: Dr Hywel Jones

      Dr Hywel Jones answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      I didn’t know the answer to this but I found it here and it seems to make sense:
      http://krazykatz.ipbfree.com/lofiversion/topic241/
      I’m going to experiment with my cats.

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