How does the domestic chicken see?
The domestic chicken (Gallus domesticus) is a bird in the order not recorded. Its eyes belong to the vision type .
Measured in this species: motion (flicker fusion). One measured dial: a value other than colour or sharpness is measured in this species; colour and sharpness are not measured here. Every value below carries its evidence level and sources; nothing is typed by hand.
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What stands out
- It has 4 colour receptor classes, including ultraviolet; people have 3.
- It stops seeing flicker at 87 Hz, against 60 Hz for people in this dataset, so fast motion looks about 1.5 times slower to it.[5][4]
The six dials
Evidence levels: how the tiers work. "Measured" means a value measured in this species; "Estimated" values come from a close relative or an eye-size formula.
| Dial | Value | Evidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colour | Colour receptors 4 receptor classes: 373 nm (UVS), 449 nm (SWS (blue)), 503 nm (MWS (green)), 566 nm (LWS (long)) GROUP TEMPLATE (tier C, no measured relative in genus, family, order or class): median receptor set of 21 measured species in group Aves (tidy-table major group) (4 classes): Accipiter nisus, Amadina fasciata, Anas… | Group default | [1][2][3] |
| Ultraviolet yes: at least one receptor peaks in the ultraviolet | Group default | ||
| Sharpness | No value in the catalogue. | ||
| Field of view | No value in the catalogue. | ||
| Sharp zones (foveas) | No value in the catalogue. | ||
| Night vision | Rods vs cones no rods (invertebrate photoreceptors) | Group default | |
| Motion (flicker fusion) | Flicker fusion frequency 87 Hz median of 5 bright-light rows (behavioural/whole-eye ERG rows; all rows: [63.5, 71.5, 87.0, 104.0, 105.0]) | Measured | [4] |
Related animals
- Tuatara same vision type
- Commander same vision type
- Common owl-moth same vision type
- Horseshoe crab same vision type
- Australian lungfish same vision type
- Brine shrimp same vision type
More birds: all birds with measured vision data.
Sources
- Lind O, Mitkus M, Olsson P, Kelber A. 2014. Ultraviolet vision in birds: the importance of transparent eye media. Proc R Soc B 281:20132209. Table 1. doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2013.2209
- Longcore T. 2023. A compendium of photopigment peak sensitivities and visual spectral response curves of terrestrial wildlife to guide design of outdoor nighttime lighting. Basic Appl Ecol 73:40-50. doi:10.1016/j.baae.2023.09.002. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8432720
- VPOD in-vivo (MSP / single-cell) lambda max compendium, file scp_cleaned.csv, VPOD GitHub (Frazer et al. 2025 bioRxiv 10.1101/2025.08.22.671864). github.com/VisualPhysiologyDB/visual-physiology-opsin-db/tree/main/scripts_n_notebooks/vpod_ML_workflows/mine_n_match/data_sources/lmax/vpod
- Inger R, Bennie J, Davies TW, Gaston KJ. 2014. Potential biological and ecological effects of flickering artificial light. PLoS ONE 9(5): e98631. Table 3. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0098631
- Healy K, McNally L, Ruxton GD, Cooper N, Jackson AL. 2013. Metabolic rate and body size are linked with perception of temporal information. Animal Behaviour 86:685-696. Table 1. doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2013.06.018
Every value cites its sources (all sources). Data: catalogue-v1, built 2026-09-29. Accuracy notes: how accurate is this?