The ability to see the world around us in the whole spectrum of its colors and shades is a unique gift of nature to man. The world of colors that our eyes are capable of perceiving is bright and amazing. But man is not the only living creature on this planet. Do animals and insects also see objects, colors, night outlines? How do flies or bees see our room, for example, or a flower?
Insect eyes
Modern science with the help of special devices managed to see the world through the eyes of different animals. This discovery became a sensation in due time. It turns out that many of our smaller brothers, and especially insects, do not see the picture we are observing at all. Do flies see at all? Yes, but not at all, and it turns out that we and the flies, and other flying and crawling ones, seem to live in one world, but completely different.
It's all about the structure of the eye. In insects, he is not alone, or rather, not quite alone. The eye of an insect is gathered together thousands of small eyes, or facets, or ommatidia. They look like conical lenses. Each such ommatidium sees a different, only accessible part of the picture. How do flies see? The image they are observing is similar to a picture assembled from a mosaic, or a puzzle.
The visual acuity of insects depends on the number of ommatidia. The most sighted is a dragonfly, she has ommatidia - as much as about 30 thousand. Butterflies are also sighted - about 17 thousand, for comparison: a fly - 4 thousand, a bee - 5. The most visually impaired is an ant, its eye contains only 100 facets.
All-round defense
Another ability of insects, distinctive from human, is the possibility of a circular view. The eye lens is able to see everything at 360 ° . Among mammals, the largest angle of view of a hare is 180 ° . Therefore, he is nicknamed oblique, but what if there are so many enemies. The lion is not afraid of enemies, and his eyes look at less than 30 about the horizon. In small insects, nature compensated for the lack of growth by the ability to see everyone who sneaks up on them. What else distinguishes the visual perception of insects is the speed of the change of picture. During a fast flight, they manage to notice everything that people cannot see at such speed. For example, how do flies see TV? If our eyes were like those of a fly or a bee, it would be necessary to twist the film ten times faster. Catching a fly from behind is almost impossible; she sees a wave of her hand faster than it happens. The man seems to be a slow tortoise by an insect, and the tortoise is generally a motionless stone.
Colors of rainbow
Almost all insects are color blind. They distinguish colors, but in their own way. It is interesting that the eyes of insects and even some mammals do not perceive red at all or see it as blue, purple. For a bee, red flowers look black. Plants that need bee pollination do not bloom red. Most bright colors are scarlet, pink, orange, burgundy, but not red. Those rare ones that allow themselves a red outfit are pollinated in a different way. Here is such a relationship in nature. It is difficult to imagine how scientists managed to find out how flies see the colors of the room, but it turns out that their favorite color is yellow, and blue and green annoy them. Here it is. To have fewer flies in the kitchen, you just need to color it correctly.
Do flies see in the dark?
Flies, like most flying insects, sleep at night. Yes, yes, they also need a dream. If the fly is constantly driven away and not allowed to sleep for three days, she dies. Flies see poorly in the dark. These are insects with round eyes, but myopic. They do not need eyes to search for food.
Unlike flies, worker bees see well at night, which allows them to work on the night shift too. At night, flowers smell sharper and rivals less nectar.
Dung beetles are well seen at night , but the American cockroach is recognized as the undisputed leader in vision in the dark.
Item Shape
Interesting is the perception of the shape of the object by different insects. The specificity is that they may not at all perceive simple forms that are not needed for their vitality. Bees, butterflies do not see objects of simple forms, especially motionless, but they are attracted to everything that has complex shapes of flowers, especially if they move, sway. This explains, in particular, the fact that bees and wasps rarely sting a person who is standing motionless, and if they sting, then to the area of the lips when he is talking (moving his lips). Flies and some other insects of a person do not perceive, they sit on it just in search of food, which they search by smell and see with sensors on their paws.
General insect vision features
- Only butterflies can distinguish red color - they pollinate rare flowers of such a gamut.
- The structure of the eye in all is faceted, the difference is in the number of ommatidia.
- Trichromasia, or the ability to transform colors into three main ones: purple, green and ultraviolet.
- The ability to break through and reflect light rays and see the whole picture of the surrounding reality.
- The ability to view pictures that change very quickly.
- Insects are able to navigate in the sunlight, so night butterflies flock to the lamp.
- Binocular vision helps predators in the insect world accurately determine the distance to their prey.