[Dragaera] night vision

[Jerry Friedman]

--- On Tue, 7/22/08, Mia McDavid <mia_mcdavid at comcast.net> wrote:

> From: Mia McDavid <mia_mcdavid at comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: [Dragaera] night vision
> To: dragaera at lists.dragaera.info
> Date: Tuesday, July 22, 2008, 5:37 PM
> Howard Brazee wrote:
> 
> > Look at which birds have eyes on the side, and which
> have eyes in 
> > front.   Prey have their eyes on the side.   Predators
> are better off 
> > with binocular vision - especially flying predators.  
> It's important to 
> > be able to judge exactly when swooping down on a
> mouse, and not crash 
> > into the ground.   Prey would rather see a larger
> angle to avoid being caught.
> 
> And what is a jhereg?  A carnivore, to be sure, but I
> understood it to 
> be pretty much entirely a scavenger.  That means that its
> food is 
> stationary, but it has to watch out for predators or larger
> scavengers  while it eats.

Delurking since people mentioned birds.  Most predators
are also prey.  According to Dunne, Sutton, and Sibley,
in /Hawks in Flight/, one consistent difference between
hawks and eagles is that when hawks eat prey they've got
on the ground, they look behind them first; eagles don't.
(In North America, anyway.)  So that's hawks' predator
anatomy and prey behavior.

Jerry Friedman