Seeing the World Through a Tarsier’s Eyes
Tarsiers are small (tennis ball-sized) nocturnal primates that have the largest eyes relative to body size of any known living or extinct vertebrate. Their enormous eyes are thought to enhance visually-guided predation by increasing visual sensitivity in dim light and contrasting an object of focus with a progressive depth of field.
Why Is Human Color Vision so Odd?
Most mammals rely on scent rather than sight. Look at a dog’s eyes, for example: they’re usually on the sides of its face, not close together and forward-facing like ours. Having eyes on the side is good for creating a broad field of vision, but bad for depth perception and accurately judging distances in front.
Being Human: Your Brain on Art
The Mona Lisa’s smile has intrigued countless viewers, from art historians to the average tourist walking past it in the Louvre. What is the secret behind this enigma?
Grantee Spotlight: Davide Faggionato
Davide Faggionato
Davide Faggionato was awarded a Leakey Foundation research grant during our spring 2015 cycle for his project entitled “Molecular and functional analysis of vision in three hominin species.”
Hominin paleogenomics, the study of genomes retrieved from fossil hominin remains, has revolutionized the way we study human evolution. For the first time, we can sample DNA from archaic humans