The Equine Eye

This afternoon I tried to take some photographs of the horses on the Ardgowan Estate.

It was very autumnal today and the more I tried to get a shot of the horse he kept nudging me, so I decided to take a close-up of this beautiful animal.

How do horses see the world? The equine eye is the largest of any land mammal. Horses have lateral eye placement, meaning their eyes are located on the sides of their heads. This gives them a much larger field of view compared to humans; in fact, when holding their heads level, they possess a nearly spherical field of vision. An advantage in detecting predators, many prey animals have this sort of eye placement. But horse eyes are also placed somewhat frontally, affording them binocular overlap ranging from 55 to 65 degrees.