THE avian view of the world is distinctly one-sided, and Nathan Hart of the
University of Queensland in Brisbane thinks he knows why. Hart and his
colleagues found that the left eyes of European starlings contained more
single-cone cells—which are thought to detect colour—while their
right eyes had more movement-detecting double-cone cells (Current
Biology, vol 10, p 115).
Birds often prefer to look at things with either their right or left eye, and
the researchers think that these differences may explain this preference.
