Animals with 'night vision goggles'

Jonathan Amos Science correspondent

18 June 2018

A tarsier is known for its big, beady eyes, but it's only when you look at a skull of this diminutive South East Asian primate that you realise just how big they are.

Each one is the same size as its brain. They can't move their eyeballs; if they want to look to the right or left they have to turn their whole head. But the mere fact that tarsiers have these monster organs tells you one thing: vision is very important to them.

The animal is a master in the dark, able to see and snaffle insects and small birds even when it seems impossibly dark.

"Theirs is a monochrome world; the back of their eyes are packed with photoreceptor rods, not cones, so they can gather every last photon of light," explains Prof Geoff Boxshall from London's Natural History Museum.

"Their eyes are the animal world's equivalent of night-vision goggles."

Geoff is the science lead on a new exhibition opening at the NHM in July that will celebrate Life In The Dark.

There is an amazing diversity of creatures out there with some incredible tricks, to not only survive but also thrive in the absence of light.

The museum has pulled the best of them from its collections. Some you'll know but hadn't perhaps considered the genius of their adaptations - such as bats.

Some creatures will definitely be new to you because they've only recently been discovered. There's some truly bizarre stuff living in caves and in the deep ocean, for example.

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