How does the rhesus macaque see?
The rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) is a mammal in the order Primates. Its eyes belong to the vision type Human-like trichromat (baseline): 3 cones (S/M/L), high foveal acuity, ~120 deg binocular overlap; the reference image.
Measured in this species: colour, sharpness, field of view, foveas, night vision 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.
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What stands out
- It has three colour receptor classes, like most people.
- Its sharpest vision resolves 51.75 cycles per degree: the finest stripe pattern it can tell apart from grey.
- Its eyes cover about 200° around the head, with 140° seen by both eyes at once.
- It stops seeing flicker at 78 Hz, against 60 Hz for people in this dataset, so fast motion looks about 1.3 times slower to it.[16][17]
- Activity pattern: diurnal.
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 3 receptor classes: 434 nm (VS/SWS (violet)), 536 nm (MWS (green)), 562 nm (LWS (long)) measured in this species | Measured | [1] |
| Sharpness | Acuity 51.75 cycles per degree median of 2 behavioural rows (method priority rule) | Measured | [2][3] |
| Field of view | Binocular overlap 140° median of 1 rows (eyes-at-rest rows preferred) | Measured | [4] |
| Total field of view 200° median species-v1 total field of order Primates: Homo sapiens | Group default | [5] | |
| Blind area behind the head 160° | Group default | [5] | |
| Eye placement frontal frontal if binocular overlap >= 60 deg, else lateral | Derived | [4] | |
| Sharp zones (foveas) | Number of foveas 1 fovea_present / area_centralis_type (retinal topography; count 1 = fovea present, 0 = none) | Measured | [6] |
| Fovea type fovea | Measured | [6] | |
| Night vision | Activity pattern diurnal mode of 9 rows (of 9 rows): diurnal; photopic | Measured (not re-verified) | [7][8][9][1][10][11][12][13] |
| Pupil shape vertical | Group default | [14][15] | |
| Rods vs cones cone-dominated nocturnal -> rod-dominated; crepuscular / cathemeral / mixed -> mixed; diurnal -> cone-dominated | Derived | [7][8][9][1][10][11][12][13] | |
| Motion (flicker fusion) | Flicker fusion frequency 78 Hz median of 2 bright-light rows (behavioural/whole-eye ERG rows; all rows: [61.0, 95.0]) | Measured | [16][17] |
Related animals
- Human same vision type
- Chimpanzee same vision type
- Crab-eating macaque same vision type
- Southern pig-tailed macaque same vision type
- Green monkey same vision type
- Vervet monkey same vision type
More mammals: all mammals with measured vision data.
Sources
- 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
- Kirk EC, Kay RF 2004. The evolution of high visual acuity in the Anthropoidea. In Anthropoid Origins, Table 1 (behavioural acuity). doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8873-7_20
- Veilleux CC, Kirk EC 2014. Visual acuity in mammals. Brain Behav Evol 83:43, Supplementary Table 1 (cleaned CSV in Evo-M1-Trait-Data). doi.org/10.1159/000357830
- Heesy CP 2004. On the relationship between orbit orientation and binocular visual field overlap in mammals. Anat Rec 281A:1104, Table 1. doi.org/10.1002/ar.a.20116
- species_v1:Campbell & Green 1965
- Kopania EEK, Clark NL. 2025. Mammalian retinal specializations for high acuity vision evolve in response to both foraging strategies and morphological constraints. Evolution Letters 9: qrae072. Supplementary Tables S1-S2.. doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qrae072
- Anderson SR, Wiens JJ. 2017. Out of the dark: 350 million years of conservatism and evolution in diel activity patterns in vertebrates. Evolution 71:1944-1959. Dryad doi:10.5061/dryad.fg700. doi.org/10.5061/dryad.fg700
- Borges R, Johnson WE, O'Brien SJ, Gomes C, Heesy CP, Antunes A (2018) Adaptive genomic evolution of opsins reveals that early mammals flourished in nocturnal environments. BMC Genomics 19:121
- Wilman et al. 2014 EltonTraits 1.0, MamFuncDat.txt. doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3559887.v1
- Maor R, Dayan T, Ferguson-Gow H, Jones KE. 2017. Temporal niche expansion in mammals from a nocturnal ancestor after dinosaur extinction. Nature Ecology & Evolution 1:1889-1895. Supplementary Table 1. doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0366-5
- Jones KE et al. 2009. PanTHERIA: a species-level database of life history, ecology, and geography of extant and recently extinct mammals. Ecology 90:2648. Ecological Archives E090-184. doi.org/10.1890/08-1494.1
- Schmitz L, Motani R. 2011. Science 332:705-708, SOM. doi.org/10.1126/science.1200043
- Moura et al. 2024. A phylogeny-informed characterisation of global tetrapod traits addresses data gaps and biases. PLoS Biol 22:e3002658. TetrapodTraits v3.0.1.. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22536349
- Banks MS, Sprague WW, Schmoll J, Parnell JAQ, Love GD. 2015. Science Advances 1:e1500391. doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1500391
- Cervino NG et al. 2021. A closer look at pupil diversity and evolution in frogs and toads. Proc R Soc B 288:20211402. doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.15112050.v1
- 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?