Abstract
THE sensitivity of the eyes of nocturnal animals to infra-red radiations has long been a matter of much speculation. Sensitivity into the far infra-red has been claimed by Vanderplank1 for the owl—an animal with a rod retina; Matthews and Matthews2, however, working on the same animal, did not find any retinal action potentials in response to infra-red stimulation, and Hecht and Pirenne3, who were using the pupillo-motor response of the owl's eye as an index of wave-length sensitivity, found no observable contraction in response to stimulation with infra-red radiations of an energy content of 5 × 106 times that of green light, which produced a marked iris contraction.
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References
Vanderplank, F. L., Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 505 (1934).
Matthews, L. H., and Matthews, B. H. C., Nature, 143, 983 (1939).
Hecht, S., and Pirenne, M. H., J. Gen. Physiol., 23, 709 (1940).
Wojtusiak, R. F., Extr. Bull. Acad. Polon. Sci., B (1947).
Wojtusiak, R. F., and Mlynarski, M., Extr. Bull. Acad. Polon. Sci., B (1949).
Gunter, R., J. Physiol. (in the press).
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GUNTER, R. Sensitivity of the Cat's Eye to Infra-red Radiations. Nature 167, 1062–1063 (1951). https://doi.org/10.1038/1671062a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1671062a0
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