How does the brownbanded bamboo shark see?

The brownbanded bamboo shark (Chiloscyllium punctatum) is a shark or ray in the order Orectolobiformes. Its eyes belong to the vision type Shark, ray and warm-eyed ocean predator: sharks: 1 cone class (monochromat) + tapetum; rays: 3 cones; swordfish heat their eyes for faster vision.

Measured in this species: colour, sharpness and motion (flicker fusion). Measured core: measured values on at least 3 of the 6 dials. Every value below carries its evidence level and sources; nothing is typed by hand.

Sample scene drawn in code: a face with red lips, a green shirt, red and green apples, flowers and a colour strip, as a person sees it. — The sample scene as a person sees it.

The same sample scene rendered by the See Like Animals engine for the brownbanded bamboo shark's eyes, using the values in the table below. — The same scene rendered for the brownbanded bamboo shark (60° field of view, daylight).

See your photo as the brownbanded bamboo sharkThis species is in the free set of the tool. Your photo stays on your device.

What stands out

It has one receptor class for colour, so it sees brightness but no hue.
Its sharpest vision resolves 1.8 cycles per degree: the finest stripe pattern it can tell apart from grey.
It stops seeing flicker at 44 Hz, against 60 Hz for people in this dataset, so fast motion looks choppier to it.^[5][6]

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.

Vision values for the brownbanded bamboo shark (Chiloscyllium punctatum), catalogue-v1
Dial	Value	Evidence	Sources
Colour	Colour receptors 1 receptor class: 531.9 nm (MWS (green)) measured in this species	Measured (not re-verified)	^[1][2]
Sharpness	Acuity 1.8 cycles per degree median of 1 behavioural rows (method priority rule)	Measured	^[3]
Field of view	No value in the catalogue.
Sharp zones (foveas)	No value in the catalogue.
Night vision	No value in the catalogue.
Motion (flicker fusion)	Flicker fusion frequency 44 Hz median of 1 rows (no bright-light flag) (behavioural/whole-eye ERG rows; all rows: [44.0])	Measured	^[4]

Related animals

Epaulette shark same vision type
Dwarf spotted wobbegong shark same vision type
Ornate wobbegong same vision type
Spotted wobbegong same vision type
Western wobbegong shark same vision type
Scalloped hammerhead shark same vision type

More sharks and rays: all sharks and rays with measured vision data.

Sources

Hart NS, Lamb TD, Patel HR et al. 2020. Visual opsin diversity in sharks and rays. Mol Biol Evol 37:811-827. doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msz269
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
Caves EM, Fernandez-Juricic E, Kelley LA (2024) Ecological and morphological correlates of visual acuity in birds. J Exp Biol 227(2): jeb246063. Supplementary Table S1.. doi.org/10.1242/jeb.246063
Lafitte A, Sordello R, Legrand M, Nicolas V, Obein G, Reyjol Y. 2022. A flashing light may not be that flashy: A systematic review on critical fusion frequencies. PLoS ONE 17(12): e0279718. S10 File (CFF database). doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279718
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
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

Every value cites its sources (all sources). Data: catalogue-v1, built 2026-09-29. Accuracy notes: how accurate is this?