Photographer Rachel Moore captured this unreal photo of a humpback whale’s eye while on a trip in French Polynesia. She took the photograph near Tahiti on Oct. 6, 2024.
Dubbed “Sweet Girl,” the humpback whale was estimated to be between three and four years old.
You can find her post on Instagram below.
But I was wondering how large are the eyes of a whale, and the answer was not that straightforward. I found this study from 2014 where they examined 6 eyeballs1 of 3 female calves. It turns out their eyes are shaped like a squashed oval with the following dimensions:
- Mediolateral (side-to-side): 4,52 cm
- Dorsoventral (top-to-bottom): 6,40 cm
- Anteroposterior (front-to-back): 6,92 cm
That means that the size of a humpback whale’s eye is about as large as a large-sized egg which is tiny compared to a whale’s body.
If humans had proportionally the same sized eyes, they would be the size of a corinthian raisin. And if the opposite was the truth, whales eyes would be the size of a watermelon.
Here’s also the uncropped image of the whale’s eye from Rachel’s website.
also called globes.↩