The scaling of eye size in adult birds: Relationship to brain, head and body sizes

Birds' eyes seem often to be about as large as head size allows and brain size is taken here as a measure of the ill-defined space that is available to accommodate them. In four data sets for non-passerines eye size relates more strongly to brain size than to body mass and most non-passerine data are consistent with eye:brain (or eye:head-space) isometry. Eye:body allometry thus seems to follow from a negative head-space:body allometry. In passerines the eye:brain size correlations seem to be secondary to strong eye:body, brain:body, and perhaps therefore head-space:body correlations, a difference attributed to the passerines' greater anatomical uniformity. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.