Tim Birkhead Quotes

But concerning vision alone is a separate science formed among philosophers, namely, optics, and not concerning any other sense ... It is possible that some other science may be more useful, but no other science has so much sweetness and beauty of utility. Therefore it is the flower of the whole of philosophy and through it, and not without it, can the other sciences be known.

The human eye has long fascinated lovers, artists and physicians. The ancient Greeks dissected eyes, but struggled to understand how they worked, unclear as to whether they received or emanated light.

In the 19th century the anatomy of the eye was known in great detail and the sophisticated mechanisms it employs to deliver an accurate picture of the outside world astounded everyone who was familiar with them.

Thus there is no doubt the eye was intended for us to see with.

Most people have stereo vision, so why belittle that very, very important element of our existence?

The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is.

The cooperation of the two retina in one field of vision, whatever is its cause, must rather be the source of all the ideas to which single or double vision may give rise.

Double Spectacles

If you look at how beautiful the eye can be, it has its own inside patterns and colors.

One of the things I really love about 3D is that because as we grow older on eye weakens more than the other, 3D becomes more difficult for adults to watch than it is for children who have very balanced eyes often.

Though it is true we are the highest and smartest animals, ospreys have eyes we have calculated to be sixty times more powerful and sophisticated than our own and that blindness, often caused by microscopic parasites that are themselves miracles of ingenuity, is one of the oldest and most tragic disorders known to man. And why award the superior eye (or in the case of cat or bat, also the ear) to the inferior species.

At least 15 percent of human females possess a genetic mutation that gives them an extra (fourth) type of color photoreceptor - and this allows them to discriminate between colors that look identical to the majority of us with a mere three types of color photoreceptors.

Why cat were given such terrific peripheral vision when they spend so much time looking down their noses is difficult to understand.

There's no particular evidence that any of the lower mammals or any of the other animals have any interest in aesthetics at all. But Homo sapiens does, always has and always will.

The fruit flies we work with have the equivalent of about a 25 by 25 pixel camera. But that camera is very, very fast, about 10 times faster than the human visual system.

The eye sees what it brings the power to see.

Perhaps measuring animal intelligence by comparing it to human intelligence isn't the best litmus test.

We see the moon, don't we? So it's our eye. Animals see us, don't they? So we're their animals.

There is no object so large but that at a great distance from the eye it does not appear smaller than a smaller object near.

Experiments with animals have long been handicapped by our anthropocentric attitude: We often test them in ways that work fine with humans but not so well with other species.

Actually, 3D is really the most normal thing because it's how those of us with two eyes usually see the world. TVs are the unusual things in 2D!

The eye is the most refined of our senses, the one which communicates most directly with our mind, our consciousness.

Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.

I like that 3D is based on the fact that you look with two eyes, so two cameras imitate that.

The chimpanzee study was - well, it's still going on, and I think it's taught us perhaps more than anything else to be a little humble; that we are, indeed, unique primates, we humans, but we're simply not as different from the rest of the animal kingdom as we used to think.