ABSTRACT
Birds, and especially raptors, are highly visual animals. Some of them have the highest spatial resolving power known in the animal kingdom, allowing prey detection at distance. While many raptors visually track fast-moving and manoeuvrable prey, requiring high temporal resolution, this aspect of their visual system has never been studied before. In this study, we estimated how fast raptors can see, by measuring the flicker fusion frequency of three species with different lifestyles. We found that flicker fusion frequency differed among species, being at least 129 Hz in the peregrine falcon, Falco peregrinus, 102 Hz in the saker falcon, Falco cherrug, and 81 Hz in the Harris's hawk, Parabuteo unicinctus. We suggest a potential link between fast vision and hunting strategy, with high temporal resolution in the fast-flying falcons that chase fast-moving, manoeuvrable prey and a lower resolution in the Harris's hawk, which flies more slowly and targets slower prey.
FOOTNOTES
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing or financial interests.
Author contributions
Conceptualization: S.P., M.P., A.K.; Methodology: S.P., M.P., A.K.; Software: M.P.; Validation: S.P., A.K.; Formal analysis: S.P.; Data curation: S.P., M.L.; Writing - original draft: S.P.; Writing - review & editing: S.P., M.P., A.K.; Supervision: S.P., A.K.; Funding acquisition: S.P., A.K.
Funding
This study was financially support by the Vetenskapsrådet (2016-03298), the Knut och Alice Wallenbergs Stiftelse (Ultimate Vision) and Stiftelsen MB.
Supplementary information
Supplementary information available online at http://jeb.biologists.org/lookup/doi/10.1242/jeb.209031.supplemental
- Received June 25, 2019.
- Accepted November 26, 2019.
- © 2020. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd
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