this is moreso an observation I made while googling around and I don’t really have a reason but here’s what an article had to say:
Interestingly, large felines like tigers and lions do not have slit-shaped pupils but round-shaped. The reason for this is not exactly defined, but it is thought to be due to their greater height off the ground, their behavior as active foragers rather than ambush predators, or differences in their circadian rhythms compared to cats.
https://www.catster.com/lifestyle/why-do-cats-have-slit-pupils/
Labelling the Flash Reflection is really funny to me. It’s sort of like finding Saddam Hussein in places he shouldn’t be or a diagram of a cat brain which just shows smaller cats in a control room.
No, it make sense, not everyone realizes that it is actually an artefact and not part of the eye.
Pallas’s cats (manul) seems to be an anomaly then, they are about the size of the domestic cat and also doesn’t have slit pupils.
The slits are an adaptation for hunting in the grass. Large cats stand above the grass and so have eyes more like ours.
You knew this. Just imagine the tiger with slit pupils and your brain will “wtf”. Same with panthers, lions, snow leopards, mountain lions…
I love looking at big cats for this reason. There’s something so cute about them having people-ish (or dog-ish, as you please) eyes.
Also, small cats tend to have pointy ears, but big cats tend to have rounder ears.
