Animal Vision
See the world through other eyes.
Use live camera filters to explore creative approximations of how animals may perceive colour, light, movement and field of view.
Worth knowing
Vision modes are creative approximations inspired by published research about animal eyesight. They are entertainment and education aids, not scientific instruments.
Screenshots
Captured on an Android phone by the developer, using the real camera.
Showing screenshot 1 of 4
What Animal Vision is
Animal Vision turns your phone camera into a window onto other ways of seeing. Twenty-four filters are implemented in the current build — from familiar dog and cat vision through bee ultraviolet, jumping spider, frog, snake, eagle, owl, bat, chameleon, mantis shrimp, octopus, dolphin, shark and deep-sea modes to the deliberately abstract jellyfish and plant filters — each rendered live over the camera through a real-time OpenGL pipeline, with a swipe carousel, per-animal science notes, photo capture and sharing, and a Learn library covering how each animal's eyes and brain build its world. Every filter is a creative approximation inspired by published research, and the app says so on-screen: educational visualisation, never literal animal sight. A release-quality 0.1.0 build exists; signing, store setup and final on-device testing are what stand between it and Google Play.
What it does
- 24 implemented live camera filters, from dog to mantis shrimp
- Swipe carousel with per-animal taglines and science notes
- Photo capture and sharing, processed on the device
- Learn library: filter explainers, glossary, evolution timelines and brain-interpretation notes
- On-screen honesty: every filter is labelled as a creative approximation
- Works fully offline — no network permission at all
The same street, twenty-four different worlds
A bee lands on a flower that, to it, glows with ultraviolet runway markings. A dog reads the park through motion and two colour channels. A mantis shrimp shatters the scene into a spectral riot no human eye can follow. Animal Vision makes those differences visible — live, through your own camera.
Four filters worth meeting first
Every filter is a creative, research-inspired approximation — an educational visualisation of documented traits, never a literal reproduction of animal perception. Genuine in-app screenshots are being prepared for this page.
Mantis Shrimp
The most extreme colour system known — up to sixteen photoreceptor classes — rendered as a shifting spectral mosaic across the live view.
Dolphin Echolocation
An interactive pulse layered over dolphin vision, visualising how returning sound sketches shapes that eyes alone can't resolve. A visual metaphor — the app performs no real echolocation.
Frog Motion Response
Frog retinas famously answer to movement; the filter mutes the static world and lets moving elements pop, which is best appreciated by panning the camera.
Eagle Central Focus
A deep central-acuity region with softened periphery suggests a raptor's foveal zoom — an illustration of focus, not literal eagle-level acuity from a phone lens.
Built to teach, not just to filter
The Learn library behind the camera is as substantial as the filters themselves.
Filter explainers
What each effect shows, what the science says and where the approximation bends reality.
Evolution timelines
How each visual system arose, from ancient photoreceptors onward.
Brain interpretations
Why seeing happens in brains as much as eyes — per animal.
Glossary and further reading
Plain-language terms with pointers to sources you can check yourself.
Try the vision filters
Interactive demo — no install needed.
Switch a sample scene between browser approximations of the app's filters.
Getting Animal Vision
Animal Vision 0.1.0 is finished and feature-complete, targeting Android 10 and newer. There is no store listing yet, so there is no download button here — one will appear by itself the moment a real link exists. This site never publishes a placeholder download.
At a glance
- Status
- Released
- Version
- 0.1.0
- Runs on
- Android (Android 10+)
- Offline use
- Works offline
- Package
- com.animalvision
- Last updated
Privacy
Camera frames are processed entirely on your device. Nothing you point the camera at is stored or transmitted unless you deliberately save a photo or clip.
Permissions
- Camera
- Shows the live animal-vision view. Frames are processed on the device.
- Microphone
- Declared in the current development build for recording video clips with sound. Only used while you record.
Technical details
Technical details
Built with
How it is put together
- Real-time OpenGL ES fragment shaders render each vision filter over the live camera feed.
- A filter registry describes all 24 modes as data, so the carousel, Learn library and attribution notes stay in step.
- No network permission is declared at all — every frame is processed on the device.
Development workflow
Built through Claude Code.
Timeline
- Release candidate
Version 0.1.0 build completed and audited against release criteria.
- Genuine captures
Four filter screenshots supplied by the developer and published.
Accessibility in the app
- All vision modes labelled for screen readers
- Full functionality without sound
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