What Does It Feel Like to See as Prey Animal? This Simulator Headset Will Show You
How does it feel to see as a prey animal sees? Clem Mayer of element14 Presents built this simulator headset to find out.
Humans are omnivores that eat plants just fine, but we’re also predators. There are many physiological and anatomical indications of that, including one that is true of many predators: forward-facing eyes. It isn’t a hard rule, but predators tend to have eyes that face forward and prey animals tend to have eyes that point outwards to the sides. How does it feel to see that way? Clem Mayer of element14 Presents built this simulator headset to find out.
The basic theory behind eye placement is that predators benefit from forward-facing eyes, so they can target prey and hunt more effectively — what is in front of them matters, but they aren’t too worried about the periphery. Prey animals, on the other hand, benefit from seeing as much of their surroundings as possible to prevent a sneak attack.
Mayer's headset forces a human to see to the sides, like a deer does. It works using two Raspberry Pi Wide NoIR Camera Module 3 cameras, mounted to point to the side in an approximation of a typical prey animal’s eye arrangement. A Raspberry Pi 5 takes the video streams from both cameras and a Python script joins them together into a single video, with an adjustable blurred overlap in the middle to avoid a harsh transition. That somewhat mimics what our eyes naturally do.
Those components strap onto an FPV headset, which receives the video from the Raspberry Pi via a composite signal. For simultaneous recording on a separate PC, the Pi also runs a lightweight web server to host the video stream.
With the hardware ready, Mayer donned the headset to find out what it is like to see as a cow sees.
The best word to describe it would be “unpleasant” and that is putting it mildly. Our brains simply aren’t wired for that kind of vision and it is very disorienting. However, Mayer found that it was possible to get slightly accustomed to the experience — something that could potentially improve with more time. He also learned a little bit about prey behavior, like how zig-zagging evasive movements let the prey animal keep one eye or the other on the chasing predator.