Parakeet Vision - How Well Can a Parakeet See?

Parakeets were not prey-eating animals. They didn't have to hunt down mice and rats. They mostly ate seeds, greens, small insects, other tiny items. Hearing and smell and taste really weren't high on the importance chart for parakeets. Parakeets have very low levels of hearing - they didn't need to hear mice scampering in the grasses to eat them. They didn't really taste buds - it didn't matter how yummy a stalk of millet was. But they DID need very good eyesight. When they were flying in giant flocks of 2,000 or 3,000 birds over an Australian plain, they needed to be able to spot that nice area of grasses with fresh seeds. Eyesight was critical to parakeets, for them to survive.

Parakeet eyesight is even more powerful than that of humans. Us humans have a variety of senses - we have a lot of taste buds to see if something is sweet or sour, bitter or tart. But parakeets didn't go around eating rotten meat or other iffy substances. To them, taste wasn't that critical. It came down to sight. They had to see things, and they had to see FRESH things.



What is cool about a parakeet's eyesight is not only is it very sharp - but it is very useful. When we humans look at a parakeet's feathers, we just see blue or green or yellow. When a parakeet looks at another parakeet, they see into the ultraviolet spectrum. That is, they see if that parakeet has been out in a lot of sunlight recently. A parakeet's face feathers fluoresce when they are out in a lot of sunshine. That is a sign of a healthy keet. Keets can see that in each other's faces, in the fluorescence of the face feathers.

Keets can even tell if food is fresh. If you try to feed a keet old veggies, the keet will be very smart and refuse them. Keet's eyesight can see into spectrums to actually see if vegetables and fruits are fresh or old. This was of course of critical importance to a keet's survival. They mostly ate fruits and vegetables. If something was rotten, they wanted to know it BEFORE they ate it. It wasn't about smell or taste. It was about looking at it. They can look at a food item and know right there that it's fresh.

When you feed our keets fruits and veggies, give them the very freshest that you get! Then remove them after a few hours. Wilted lettuce and moldy carrots will not appeal to your keets!

Parakeet Eyes Photos and Information



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