Here's some science trivia for you: unlike the inner retina in most animals (including us), birds' inner retinas function without oxygen. And now, researchers led by a team from Aarhus University in Denmark have figured out how.
In the retinas of almost all vertebrates, the oxygen required to convert glucose into sufficient amounts of energy for cells to function is delivered courtesy of red blood cells.
Not so with birds: there are no blood vessels in the retina, so oxygen can only arrive by diffusion through the surface, making the inner retina anoxic (without oxygen).
Cells can squeeze e