Interestingly enough, in our versatile animal kingdom, there are multiple animals that are born blind. One of them is the eyeless shrimp, which only has light perception. Another one is the star-nosed mole, the fastest-eating mammal in the world, who uses touch as their main sensory organ.
When two merle dogs are bred together, the puppies have a 25% chance of being born a double merle. The pigment loss results in a very high chance of being born blind, deaf or both, and sometimes without eyes.
Olm is a blind, cave-dwelling salamander, also called the proteus. Due to its cave dwelling habit, it is blind and shows remarkable sensing including chemical and electrical signals. It's fully aquatic, swimming and foraging for insects, snails and crabs.
Many species of mammals, such as rabbits, are actually born blind (born with their eyes closed and eyelids fused together), with their eyes opening a little while later. Of course, treatment exists for animals with blindness, however, not to the extent that it does with humans.
Similar to big cats, bear cubs are born blind and without hair and are entirely dependent upon the mother. Young rely on their mother for one and a half to three years depending on the species until the mother bear goes into estrus and mates again, at which time the young are on their own.
An adult male red kangaroo can stand over 1 1/2 meters tall and weigh 90 kilograms. That's larger than a grown man. But the newborns start out the size of jelly beans. They're blind, deaf, and hairless to boot.
The blind kiwis seem able to survive just as well using other senses such as touch, smell and hearing, so maintaining good eyesight might be a waste of energy.
Hares are born with their eyes open, hair covering their bodies, and they can run within a few minutes of birth (much like a Guinea pig!). Rabbits, on the other hand, are born blind, naked, and remain in a fur-lined nest for the first days of their lives.
Congenital deafness is possible, too, meaning animals are born deaf. Some studies show that merle, piebald, and albino animals are more likely to be born deaf. On the other hand, some animals don't even have hearing as a biological sense, meaning it's completely normal for their bodies to be either deaf or almost deaf.
Snakes have infamously poor eyesight, which is why they resort to sticking out their tongues all the time to get a sense of their surroundings. But the creatures may have a way to improve their vision in a pinch.
Tiger cubs are born blind and are completely dependent on their mother. Newborn tiger cubs weigh between 785 and 1,610 grams (1.75 to 3.5 lb). The tiger cubs' eyes will open sometime between six to twelve days. However, they do not have their full vision for a couple of weeks.
Lion cubs are born blind and don't begin to open their eyes until around three to four days old. Their eyes are a blue-grey colour at first and begin to change to an orangey-brown by the age of two to three months. Lion's eyes are quite large with round pupils that are three times as big as a human's.
Baby rats are born deaf and blind. The cage should be kept in a quiet place and the litter should not be disturbed for at least 7 days after birth, especially if this is the female's first litter.
No, not all species of dolphins are blind. Ocean-going dolphins can see perfectly while certain river-dwelling species of dolphins cannot see perfectly and are completely blind. The Ganges River Dolphin does not have any eyesight.
We have all heard the saying “blind as a bat”, but are bats REALLY blind? NO! Although Dallas bats, like most creatures, are born blind, by day nine of their life their vision is excellent. The surprising truth is that most bats have eyesight as good better than that of most humans.
Elephants have poor eyesight.
Elephants have other heightened senses that help them successfully navigate the grasslands and forests. These large animals have amazing hearing, smell and touch.
1. Are ants blind? Ants have two fairly large compound eyes and can detect movement pretty well. Several ant species, such as army ants, spend the majority of their life underground and are completely blind.
Mechanical blindness occurs when a pig gains so much weight that rolls of fat close in over the eye sockets and block out her vision. Hazel is basically wearing a blindfold created by her own body. This condition is more common among pigs than one might think.
Follow a year in the life of a young blind macaque monkey and its family. Few monkeys born blind survive infancy. Even born healthy, up to 40% of babies won't make it through their first year. That this blind macaque has survived to 15 months defies all expectations.
It comes from the coleoid cephalopods, the squids, cuttlefishes, and octopuses. These animals seem to be deaf. Their deafness is so remarkable that it needs to be explained in functional and evolutionary terms.
Ants and snakes do not have ears, but they can feel vibrations with the help of other body parts. Birds and bats have ears for hearing.
Our previous studies have found that the size and morphology of pig cochlea are very similar to that of humans. Also similar with humans, the inner ear is essentially fully developed in pigs at birth with normal hearing ability (Guo et al., 2015a, Guo et al., 2015b).
Hearing in everyday life
The outer ear, known as the pinna, is very different because rabbits need to rely more on their hearing to detect predators. Domestic rabbits can suffer from hearing problems due to selective breeding for a 'cute' look.
Compared to humans, rabbits have more rods than cones in their retinas. This means rabbits can see better than we can in the dark but are limited to two-color vision. For example, they can distinguish between green and blue but cannot see red.