Cephalopod versus vertebrate eyes

Abstract

Vertebrates and cephalopods are the two major animal groups that view the world through sophisticated camera-type eyes. There are of course exceptions: nautiloid cephalopods have more simply built pinhole eyes. Excellent camera type eyes are also found in other animals, such as some spider groups, a few snails, and certain marine worms, but the vast majority of large camera-type eyes belong to cephalopods and vertebrates. Vertebrates and cephalopods also devote major parts of their brains to the processing of visual information. Obviously, there are differences in eye performance among cephalopods and vertebrates, but there are no major subgroups where vision seems to have low priority. The similarity in eye geometry is striking, especially between fish and coleoid cephalopods, with a hemispherical retina centred around a spherical lens. Do these similarities mean that vertebrate and cephalopod eyes are equally good? Comparing the eyes of vertebrates and cephalopods reveals many fundamental differences with surprisingly small consequences for vision, but also one difference that means that cephalopods and vertebrates do not share the same visual world.