What Does Your Dog Actually See? Animal Vision Camera Apps Explained
If you've ever typed what do animals see camera app into a search bar, you're basically describing Animal Eyes — point your phone at the world and watch it shift into a dog's eyes instead of your own.
It's a strange, fun kind of app to make, sitting right at the edge of science communication and party trick. I've paired it here with Earth Day Quiz, which scratches a similar itch for planet trivia once the novelty of seeing through a shark's eyes wears off.
What Do Animals See Camera App: Ten Different Animal Views
Human vision is just one way of seeing among many, and that's easier to grasp by looking than by reading about it.
Animal Eyes turns an iPhone or iPad camera into the eyes of ten different animals — dog, cat, pit viper, honeybee, eagle, shark, bull, mantis shrimp, goldfish and human — using science-backed colour and acuity simulations. Point it at your living room and watch it shift into a bee's ultraviolet-tinted view or a shark's murky low-light vision. It's free, and it works with whatever's actually in front of the camera rather than pre-set demo images, so the comparisons feel immediate.
Pairing Animal Facts With General Planet Trivia
Animal vision is one specific rabbit hole; general nature and planet knowledge is a wider one, and it's worth having both within reach.
Earth Day Quiz tests your knowledge about our planet in quiz form, which makes a decent follow-up once you've spent ten minutes seeing the world through a mantis shrimp's eyes and want to know more about the planet those animals actually live on. It's less about vision specifically and more about general environmental trivia, so it fills a different corner of the same curiosity.
Full disclosure: I build these apps myself, and Animal Eyes in particular came out of genuine curiosity about how differently other species experience colour and light. Point the camera at something ordinary — your kitchen, your street — and the ten animal views make the science land in a way a textbook diagram usually doesn't.
Frequently asked questions
Is there an app that shows what animals see through your camera?
Animal Eyes does exactly that, turning your live camera feed into simulations of ten animals' vision, including a dog, cat, eagle, shark and honeybee, using science-backed colour and acuity models.
Do I need to pay to try an animal vision camera app?
Animal Eyes is free to download on iPhone and iPad, so you can try all ten animal views without committing to a purchase first.