Here's How These 7 Pets See The World Around Them

Have you ever wondered how animals see the world around them? Well, Home Advisor created a project just to answer that question. They went through the latest scientific research to find out and visualized how animals see.

Home Advisor created a digital room and placed animals around it. After that, they rendered the pictures based on the way the specific animal would see it. For example, dogs see very few colors and spiders look like they should get some glasses. It is quite an interesting idea, as many of us have probably wondered how a little goldfish sees the world from its tank or how a chameleon uses its eyes. What do you think about this project? Did any of the images surprise you? Tell us in the comments!

More info: homeadvisor.com

"Your dog will take just about any style you make at home and turn it into a pastel-colored coastal living kind of affair. Dogs see muted combinations of the colors filtered by their two-cone eyes: blue and yellow."

"Cats must see things differently to live the way they do. But existential outlook aside, a cat’s point-of-view is characterized by its excellent night vision. While humans have a high number of cones in our retinas, cats have lots of rods – a different type of photoreceptor cell, sensitive to low light.

Your cat has a wider field of view than you (200 degrees versus 180) but not quite as wide as that of a dog. Its color vision is somewhere between that of you and your dog, too, since it is a dichromat (has two color cones) that sees blues and yellows with a bit of green as a bonus."

"If your goldfish turns its nose up at your new suite, it’s because she can see more colors than you. Her ability to see ultraviolet light helps her see in the water, but may also reveal where your dog has tried to mark its territory on the sofa.

Appropriately enough, a goldfish also enjoys a fisheye lens effect. Its round corneas gather light from an almost 360-degree canvas, and are almost the same density as water, compensating for the warping effects of light in water."

"If your only pet is a snake, you needn’t worry about the visual design of your interiors. Most snakes have very poor vision in daylight, although a good serving of rods means their nighttime vision isn’t too shabby.

The bonus for some snake species is infrared vision. Your snake may merge heat-detection data from its pit organs (thin membranes between the eyes and nostrils) with visual data to create an image that looks something like thermal imaging."

"Most spiders have eight rather feeble eyes and rely more on their hairy legs to feel their way around.

However, researchers have recently noted the color-sensing structures of opsins (a type of protein) might make them sensitive to color, and might be used to find mates. So if you notice your tarantula getting frisky with a bright blue ashtray, you know that science is on to something."

"Birds rely heavily on a highly effective visual system, and your parrot can see UV, blue, green, and red color ranges. In fact, the ‘violet’ color in this picture has been used to double for ultraviolet, which is actually colorless and invisible to humans.

Polly can also adjust her focus super-quickly and has near 300-degree coverage but monocular vision, meaning one eye focuses on one thing while the other wanders. She can also contract her pupils at will, for example, if she doesn’t dig your new lampshade."

"Who cares more about your choice of living room palette than your pet chameleon? Not only does he absorb, transform, and re-emit color (changing to regulate temperature and communicate), his eyes are almost all ‘cone’ and no ‘rod,’ so he sees lots of colors (including the ultraviolet spectrum) but little contrast.

Your chameleon’s eyes operate independently on little turrets so that he can watch for predators across a total field of vision of 342 degrees. If you need to creep up on him to grab your copy of Wallpaper back, you’ll find he has a blind spot of 18 degrees just behind his head."

We asked the designers some questions and Lee McCullagh was more than happy to answer. First, he told us what inspired this project in the first place: "Every month, thousands of curious animal lovers google 'what pets see,' and whilst the results are fascinating, it’s sometimes hard to compare their different types of vision, as all existing images focus on different landscapes and images. By leaning on academic research, HomeAdvisor decided to combat this and answer the question by placing 7 different types of pets into one virtual room so readers were able to see how different pets see our homes through a unique lens."

"One designer worked on the project. Working with the research team, they were briefed to show how each animal uniquely views the world." Home Advisor told us that they read all the latest scientific research on dogs, cats, goldfish, snakes, tarantulas, parrots, and chameleons. These pets were the most popular when people searched to find out how they see the world.

Lee also shared what the most difficult parts of the project were: "Whilst we were armed with the latest scientific findings, no one has ever viewed the world from an animal's point of view. So, sometimes the garish colors made us second-guess whether an animal really did view the world in such a way, but after rereading all the findings, we were confident with the results. The hardest to portray was the chameleon, as visualizing a 342-degree view whilst taking into consideration the ultraviolet spectrum was tough to explain to the designer, but the final result highlights just how amazing their field of vision is."

"We are always brainstorming more ideas and whilst there are none in production at the moment, the response to the project has been great. It would be great to hear what animals Bored Panda’s users would like to see next..." said Lee when asked about future projects, so if you have any suggestions, share in the comments below!