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GeriatricZergling t1_iue3iab wrote

Reply to comment by burjua in Is the eyesight of small animals like mice and snakes as poor as ours would be if our retinas were the size of theirs? by AbouBenAdhem

>The size doesn’t matter. Birds evolved much better vision than humans but their eyes much smaller in many cases

Incorrect. A larger eye will simply have more photoreceptors per degree of optic field, allowing a higher-resolution image, all other things being equal. If you are small (e.g. most birds), you can compensate by packing them more tightly, but this comes at an energy cost (photoreceptors are expensive).

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