Godzilla's eyesight

[Cyndi]

I've been doing a lot of poking around lately and I'm beginning to think Godzilla has eyesight like a bird of prey. If that's the case, then not only can he pick out a human face from a distance, he might also be capable of seeing into the ultraviolet spectrum.

I say this because Godzilla's pupils are round like a bird of prey and not slitted. Plus his eyes face mostly forward. He may not have as much binocular vision as a human, but he must have good depth perception in just the right place if he can aim his atomic ray as well as he does.

His eyesight seems highly acute judging by how he seems able to recognize individual human faces. I've been in a building as tall as Godzilla is, and from that height(my sight is perfect and I don't wear glasses) I could only recognize people I knew by their clothes and hairstyles, but I couldn't really see their faces.

Birds of prey have two fovea(areas where vision is clearest) as opposed to humans having only one and they can see and recognize a mouse from thousands of feet in the air.

Now magnify the size of those eyes to those of Godzilla - he can probably see a fly buzzing around your head from two or three miles away.


As for seeing in the ultraviolet spectrum...birds of prey can see that way. Animal urine glows. Female plumage turns a variety of pleasant colors. If Godzilla scared you so bad that you widdle down your legs, it'd light up like a glow stick.

So the world Godzilla sees may be a great deal more colorful than what we see.


*Note: the ultraviolet spectrum is not thermal vision, Godzilla doesn't see in heat like a Predator! :P

[EternalMothra]

This is a very fascinating thing that you are presenting. I actually believe Godzilla has thermal vision. Remember in GMK when that missile was shot underwater. It was completely off to his side, and the water was dark, he could probably see the heat emitted from the Missile's propulsion. That gave him the chance to flip Ghidorah in its way.

[Cyndi]

^Think of how big Godzilla's eyeballs are and how big his pupils are when fully dilated. He can probably see in a lot less light than even a cat or owl. Ultraviolet light is on a wavelength beyond what we can see, so maybe he could see the torpedo moving in the water.

I know Mothra has those multi-bug eyes and probably sees in the ultraviolet as well as like a kaleidoscope

[Zardac the Great]

Er...are you a biologist? It sounds like you are. And no, I'm not saying that's bad or anything.

Actually, I've thought for a while that Godzilla has good eyesight, though I've never given it much thought.

[Gorjirus]

Interesting question.


Godzilla does have excellent vision, though I doubt he could see a fly from 3 miles away.

He has recognized people from bending over or being at close to eye level. (And by angle, he couldn't even see the faces of people TO recognize them by sight).

Instead, his other senses might be more poweful. His sense of smell would probably be great as well. That would be more sensible for such a large animal. (And remember, GMK Goji didn't even have pupils).

Also, his hearing would also be good (as are alot of large creatures). That would explain the torpedo, he could easily hear it underwater, where hearing is better anyway.

[Cyndi]

Nope, not a biologist, I just read a lot :P

And I read somewhere that birds of prey can do something with the lenses in their eyes that intensifies their focus. Don't remember exactly how they do it.

I also agree about his other senses, especially with smell. I think G can smell radiation from miles away. He's probably a better detector than a geiger counter, but I think his sensitivity to the "smell" of radiation is higher when he's hungry and needs to feed off it.

Hearing - agreed, plus he's a BIG animal so his eardrums are probably HUGE. I always believed he could hear frequencies even the most sensitive equipment can't and often retreats underwater because it's a good buffer to filter out those "annoyingly painful human noises".

Touch - I think it depends. He probably wouldn't notice a human hand patting him, for instance. He sure didn't seem to notice the probe landing on him in GvsSG(or he did and just ignored it like a persistent fly). I think he might be more sensitive to touch in areas where his skin might be thinner, like his eyelids, around his nose, under his chin and along his mouth. In other words - he probably won't notice you hammering a railroad spike into his back(at least not unless it was long enough to penetrate his hide completely), but he'd swat you if you tried to dig a pick axe into his snout. I think his hide got pitted like that to maintain its thickness and integrity while letting him move, kinda like the wrinkles in the human brain that let it make the most of its space inside the skull.

Taste: Seeing as Godzilla has a tongue, he's likely to have taste buds as well. I believe that he eats and drinks between radioactive meals and probably lacks the buds for 'sweet'. He wouldn't taste the difference between sugar water and normal water, a fact I think is common with carnivores(don't hold me to that though!). I'd guess his sense of taste is relatively weak compared to his sense of smell, so he probably relies on his nose to tell him whether something is edible or not. I can easily imagine him catching something bite-sized to him like a dolphin in his mouth and swallowing it whole. And since he lacks the logic that not everything that enters his mouth is food, he seems likely to swallow anything of "swallowable" size that gets shot into his mouth. He demonstrated this twice: the cadmium missles in G85 and the ANEB grenade in GvsBio - both times he immediately shut his mouth and appeared to swallow rather than attempt to spit the stuff out.


Those are my theories anyway

[Gorjirus]

And for Heisei Godzilla, remember all the science that the bird guy was spewing out. I am sure that there is some good info in that 1985 dialougue.

[Cyndi]

I think the roars of females had those overtones so they were heard over long distances. I think the bird lure worked because Godzilla thought it was a female. It just kind of activated a primitive part of his mind that said "go do her"

Though his brain probably isn't big in comparison to his head, he's still probably smarter than the average animal in some aspects. There's already a thread about his intelligence though, so I won't go into that here.