Bird of prey

Birds of prey, also known as raptors

Sight is the strongest of all eagle senses. The eyes are large, can take up almost 50% of the head, and can weigh the same amount as a human eye. An eagles vision is 4–5 times better than that of a human. Eagle eyes are angled 30 degrees away from centre of the face, which gives eagles a greater field of view. Eagles can see five basic colours to our three, and can detect UV light.

Cones are light detecting cells that are sensitive to colour. One of the reasons that eagles have better vision than humans is because their retinas, a layer at the back of the eyeball, have more cones. We have 200,000 cones per square millimetre, whereas eagles have one million.