Snake Eye Vision

Most animals see the world in other ways than humans. Some have a different perception of colors or different peripheral vision; others can see better in the dark and some may even detect infrared light with their eyes (like Predator!).

Now, snakes are not known to have the best sight in the animal kingdom. Snake Eye Vision is a cute little app that tries to simulate a part of what it’s like to see through the reptiles’ eyes.

Snake Eye Vision won’t work without a video capture device, so make sure you have a webcam connected to the PC you want to run it on. When you open the app, you’ll see a small window with two video displays that show whatever the webcam captures.

The one on the left is the standard human vision, while the one on the right is supposed to be the snake vision. The program was made on the premise that snakes don’t see too well at all and that their eyes are best when detecting movement. The display on the right will stay mostly black, but when something moves in front of the camera, you’ll see a contour of whatever is moving.

Now it’s true that a lot of species of snakes do have poor vision, but they’re not almost blind. At one stage of their evolution they were burrowers, so they didn’t really have much need for good eyesight until they started to hunt above ground.

Still, a few species of snakes have adapted to daytime hunting, while others have become excellent night-time hunters by developing infrared night-vision (like Predator!!!). And even if the less evolved species can’t see details that well, they can still distinguish shapes, even when they don’t move.

While Snake Eye Vision makes a fun little experiment, it may give you the wrong idea about how these creatures actually see the world. Also, keep in mind that some scientific discoveries about snakes may have been made after this app was created.