MAN HAS BETTER SENSE OF VISION THAN ANIMALS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 50, 12 October 1949, Page 8

MAN HAS BETTER SENSE OF VISION THAN ANIMALS

, What does a cat see when it looks at a human being? “The beasts of prey,” declares one student of animal life, “never seem to me to look, in our sense, at all. Their eyes are fascinated by the motion of anything, as a kitten by a ball; they fasten, as if drawn by an inevitable attraction, on their food. But when a cat caresses you it never looks at you. Its heart seems to be in its back and paws, not its eyes. It will rub against you, but you may talk to it an hour yet not rightly catch its eye.” It is known that few animals can endure the stare of human eyes; it is -1 known, too, that animals see what they see acording to their several organs of sight; but no one knows what they really do see.

Sight For Scent A dog seems to sacrifice sight to scent. It has been noted again and again that a dog does not recognise his master for certain at even a short distance. In a strange environment a dog only recognises his master by sound or scent. And many a dog will mistake at the distance of only twelve yards a clod of earth for a rabbit, or a blackbird in a ditch for a rat.

“How much of a man,” it is asked, “can a snake see? What sort of image of him is received through that deadly vertical cleft in the iris —through the glazed blue of the ghastly lens?” No man can answer. Man has no knowledge of what short of world is seen by the spider, the bee, and the horse. But this can be safely said, that no animal on the earth is given that wonderful vision of man which enables him to look With mercy on an enemy and with kindness on the unlovely.

Sight is itself a miracle. The human look seems to us to have something in it of the divine.