Eye Swap Photos Will Give You Nightmares

If you’re looking for a way to induce a terrifying bout of insomnia, then the eye swap photo trend is for you.

Just when we thought we were immune to the horrors of the internet, someone decided to take the face swap meme to the next level, by doing an eye swap on picture of people with animals.

Have you every wondered what a cat would look like with human eyes? Or what a little girl would look like if we replaced her eyes with those belonging to a chicken? The results are far more creepy than we’d like to admit.

Curious about the reason for why we’re so freaked out when we see these eye swap photos? It could have something to do with the differences between the eyes of humans and those belonging to our feline, furry, and feathered friends.

To begin, most animal eyes have a tapetum, which human eyes do not posses. Tapetum is a reflective surface, laying just beneath the retina. It acts as a mirror, reflecting light back through the animal’s retina and allowing for more opportunities to capture light.

Dogs, cats, horses, and cows all have tapetums, as well as other animals which are active at night. This tapetum is what gives these creatures what they “eye shine”, or the bright, laser-like quality when we shine a light at their eyes, or snap a picture with flash.

The reflective quality of a cat’s eyes, combined with their slit-shaped pupils, is just enough to give us the creeps when checking out these eye swap images.

As for the nightmare-inducing chicken/girl? Chickens actually have a completely different way of seeing the word — literally. The chicken eye sees red, green, blue, and they are also sensitive to ultraviolet light, which means the colours we see are nothing compared to the vibrant hues from a chicken’s perspective. I suppose we might all look as paranoid as a chicken if we saw our world through the technicolor goggles often only reserved for those experiencing the after-effects of hallucinogenic drug use.

Either way, all we know is, some things can’t be unseen. We’ll be fighting off these disturbing eye swap photos for weeks.