In my vision modeling class this week, we were learning about the structure of the (primate) visual cortex and one of my classmates posed an interesting question: how is it that birds sustain such amazing visual acuity when they don’t seem to have the cortical volume to process that detailed information? In other words, how does a bird brain deal witha bird’s eye view? I’m curious – and I still am, because so far I have not found a lot of research on the topic. Indeed, I imagine it’s difficult to come up with a definitive way to determine what a bird is experiencing for the sake of a laboratory experiment. Although, if I had to hazard a guess, perhaps much of a bird’s reaction to what it sees relies on more primitive structures – maybe birds rely more on instinct than interpretation? While this seems to remain mysterious, scientists do know some neat stuff about how birds’ eyes function in ways that allow them to see what we can’t. Check it out!
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