Anyone who’s spent time in nature can attest to just how impressive natural camouflage can be. It makes sense after all. The whole point of natural coloring is to blend into the scenery and hide from predators. And no matter how civilized humans might be at the moment, deep down most of us do enjoy a wide variety of meat with our meals. As such it makes sense that we might have some trouble distinguishing animals within a complex background. But some recent challenges have taken this to a whole new level. This new challenge presents people with a whole parliament of owls. But there’s one outsider in this group of feathered friends. Amid all the owls lurks a single cat.
The original had a slightly cartoonish take on the idea. And one might be forgiven for thinking a more abstract take on the idea is why it proved so difficult for people. But the newest take on the challenge uses a more photorealistic collection of animals. From the top to the bottom of the picture one sees a collection of owls with a very similar appearance to each other. One will probably begin with an assumption that it’d be easy to find a feline in a collection of birds. But a few minutes staring into the chaos of the picture and one will usually need to rethink things. The combination of a busy crowd and similar coloration makes it quite difficult to find the cat. But there might be more at play as well. It’s true that intuition and a puzzle solving mindset play a part in this type of visual challenge. But the heart of this endeavor really is simple eyesight. And one of the unfortunate realities of modern day culture is that people tend to be somewhat negligent about eye care. But experts such as CooperVision maintain that one can take steps to improve his or her eyesight.
A huge amount of one’s visual acuity comes down to diet. Healthy eyes require a healthy diet. To begin, one should concentrate on vitamin A and lutein. Vitamin A provides rhodopsin. And all of this together can help one’s low light vision. This might impact performance by helping to differentiate between shading and shadow. With the example of owls and cats one might be able to have a better chance of making out subtle distinctions between the animals. Lutein is a pigment found areas of the eye which shields from excess light. And extra lutein has been shown to offer real world benefits to people’s vision. What’s more, both of these substances can be found in high concentrations within a familiar source. Most people have heard that carrots are good for one’s eyesight. It’s easy to assume that’s a myth. But in fact, carrots really do have high levels of both vitamin A and lutein. Of course there’s other vegetables with high levels of each. Kale is widely regarded as something of a superfood. And it holds true there too. It and other leafy green vegetables tend to have high amounts of the substances which help one see clearly. But some animal sources have high levels as well. This includes swiss chard, butter and cod liver oil. Finding the cat among the owls is a fun puzzle. But it also serves to highlight just how important it can be to take care of one’s vision.
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