Why don't animals need eye glasses?

Maybe they do and we just don’t notice until it’s too late? Poor Fluffy.

Edit: Also, animals rely more heavily on other senses than we do. For example if a dogs starts to lose its eyesight it can compensate with its exceptional smelling ability. It could probably get by without having perfect eyesight. Humans rely on their eyesight the most. Of course it is possible to get by without our eyesight (millions of people do), but we get glasses to help us before it gets to that.

It’s likely not whether they might need them… I suspect most mammals eyes are subject to the weaknesses we as humans must endure (barring the evolutionary roadblocks that a society introduces) .

But instead whether animals can competently wear them, as well as whether owners can afford the necessarily high cost of custom fitting.

Because, barring obvious astigmatism or the like it would be impossible to determine when the animal was seeing properly to get an accurate prescription for glasses.

As Allie says- they rely on other senses to compensate.

Maybe people in need deserve glasses mor than animals… No ?

Anyway the answer was not really needed, first I thought this question was a joke.

Tv brainwashing inside !

I’m going to pretend for a moment that you actually want an answer to this…

My roommate’s cat’s vision has gotten very poor, sad little blind kitty :(. But, alas, a pet’s vision isn’t as important to it as it is in the wild with a human feeding them, bathing them, and generally watching out for their well-being.

Meanwhile most animals have difficulty answering the “Better 1 or 2” questions from their doctor… So, animals may need corrective lenses but it isn’t practical or even that important to them.

Actually, laser eye surgery, and some eye tests require only that the eye focus on the the object, and can make, or calculate corrections.

The answer to the question : “why don’t animals need eyeglasses” is because elephant, otter and hippo (etc) ophthalmologists have determined that glasses are unnecessary. Instead, they prefer contacts.

Animals in the wild with astigmatism, and other ailments, would likely die out. If you can’t see, you can’t hunt. If you can’t see, you can’t escape what’s hunting you. Survival of the fittest.

my sisters miniature schnauzer would look very distinguished with some sophisticated spectacles like some old professor would wear.

Humans have developed adequate societal and technological levels that “survival of the fittest” has been eliminated as a selective pressure for poor eyesight (we don’t die if we can’t see).

Animals, on the other hand, have a lower incidence of poor eyesight because their survival often depends on being able to find food and avoid predators.

We probably will be seeing more eye problems in domesticated animals as the rate of genetic defects in the gene pool is increased.

Well animals can develop impaired vision just like some humans do. But we can’t really get a feel for what strength their eyes are. We can’t say “What looks better slide number 4 or 5?” So it would be kind of difficult to prescribe corrective eye wear for animals. Plus the big picture of if we put glasses on a dog or something, do you honestly think they would stay there for more then 2 seconds? And contacts would just be dangerous. Maybe someday in the future there will be lazier eye surgery for our pets, who knows.

I agree with everyone else, natural selection would eliminate animals with sever eye problems that would impede their ability to survive in the wild. However domestic animal are artificially kept alive by humans; these animals would benifit from optical aids, but an animal can not communicate whether or not a particular prescription improves their sight or not. Thus until man discovers a way to accurately communicate with beasts, glasses for animals will not be possible

I work in optics and what your saying is right about natural selcetion. But your wrong about not being able to perscribe the correct perscription to an animal. Babies are ofter perscribe glasses this is done by refraction. Looking at how the eyes moves and shakes when focusing an image though lenses. This can be done manually by an optician or by a machine. Obviously it is not as relliable as being able to ask mainly with complex perscriptions, but nine times out of ten it is corrct! We could probably save our cats and dogs lots of headches if we bothered to correct their sight!