May 202010
Good for pointers and aiming rifles… they also make for vaguely interesting art:
They also entertain the hell out of cats, even when not moving:
11 Responses to “Green lasers”
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Good for pointers and aiming rifles… they also make for vaguely interesting art:
They also entertain the hell out of cats, even when not moving:
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cats with laser pointers……it’s fun to watch.
Does the color of the laser have any significance to the cats.
If one could strap a later pointer to a cat, would the cat chase the light forever?
I never tried a green one on a dog, but a red one can drive a dog batty as it tries to chase the spot of light in the night; my sister’s dog got so worked up that it tried to climb up a tree while chasing after the beam.
Have you tried a red one on the cats to see if they react the same way?
They are supposed to be colorblind in the red part of the visible spectrum:
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/1998-08/903122934.Zo.r.html
Nope, My cat will chase a red laser, but she reacts more strongly to a green one. It might just be that the power output difference is the determining factor.
That’s what the article about cat eye sensitivity would suggest; a green laser is right near their eye’s best wavelength for seeing, but a red one has a wavelength that is to low for them to see it well.
That’s a bit surprising from a evolutionary point of view, as you would think that their predilection for nocturnal hunting would have given them a benefit if their eyes could see way down into the infrared range so that they could pick up the body heat of rodents, the way rattlesnakes can with the IR sensitive pits on their heads.
Maybe they are optimized to see reflected moonlight? That has a bluish tinge to it.
You really want to drive the cats wild, take a speaker and stretch some chromed Mylar over it…then play music through it and bounce the laser off of it onto the wall. The whirling geometric patterns should give them plenty to play with. 🙂
cats with laser pointers…a disaster waiting to happen: http://xkcd.com/729/
Whenever I start playing music my cat tends to go into the other room. She would never see the laser.
You need to choose the right music…say from “Born Free” or “Cat People” for instance. 😉
The strange cat paintings of someone descending into schizophrenia, which may have partially inspired the last two panels in that cartoon:
http://www.schizophrenia.com/pam/archives/misterimente1.jpg
You can see that things are starting to go wrong just looking at the eyes in that second painting.
>…their predilection for nocturnal hunting…
Cats are crepuscular, rather than nocturnal, so they need *some* light to see by, but in an urban setting, with street lighting and such, twilight lasts all night…
and don’t forget that the cat’s tapetum is usually green…
>The strange cat paintings of someone descending into schizophrenia,…
cats as diagnostic indicators of mental illness?
and also note how the in the paintings linked to, that the eyes are the last things to remain recognisable…
Lasers MUST be red. Period.
Unless you are a whimpy good jedi, but who wants to be one?
It is fact that human eyes are most sensitive to yellow-green light, perhaps cats are the same?
Jim