How do Fight Sport Athletes compare to Pumas on visual performance?

Let’s start off with near-far focus, visual acuity. The average professional MMA fighter has 20/20 vision. A cat’s visual acuity is anywhere around 20/100 to 20/200. Pumas however, have better peripheral vision. For starters, cats' visual fields are broader than for humans spanning roughly 200 degrees instead of 180 degrees. So, the things humans can sharply resolve at distances of 100-200 feet look blurry to cats, which can see these objects at distances of up to 20 feet. That might not sound so great, but there's a trade-off: Because of the various photoreceptors parked in cats' retinas, they kick an MMA fighter’s ass at seeing in dim light.

Pumas have night vision. They are nocturnal animals. Instead of the color-resolving, detail-loving cone cells that populate the center of human retinas, cats have many more rod cells, which excel in dim light and are responsible for night-vision capability. The rod cells also refresh more quickly, which lets Pumas pick up very rapid movements – like, for example, the quickly shifting path a marauding laser dot might trace.

Lastly, cats see colors differently than we do. While feline photoreceptors are most sensitive to wavelengths in the blue-violet and greenish-yellow ranges, it appears they might be able to see a little bit of green as well. In other words, cats are mostly red-green color blind, as are many of us, with a little bit of green creeping in.

So, a Puma’s vision is closely similar to an MMA fighter who is color blind. Does it matter what color of shorts your opponent is wearing? Hence, Pumas and fighters alike need to be able to see different things to survive, the Puma in the jungle and the fighter inside the octagon, so they both must evolve with different visual abilities. Fight Sport NeuroPerformance Training. Get the mind right the body will follow.