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Animal Depth Perception

Cats jump onto tables, horses jump over fences, birds land on window ledges, and chameleons can pick insects out of the air with their long tongues. All of these behaviors, and any others that involve moving around in an environment, require the ability to judge depth and distance. Because depth perception is such an important survival skill, evolution has provided almost every species with a repertoire of ways to evaluate how far away a visual object might be. This entry describes cues for depth, assessing animal depth perception, and animals' use of depth cues.

Cues for Depth

Information about depth and distance is available from several external depth cues in the environment and from internal cues that rely on physiological mechanisms to calculate the position of an ...

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