How do insects see the world? How do people see flies? Interesting facts about the sight of insects.

The ability to see the world around in the entire spectrum of its colors and shades is a unique gift of nature to man. The world of colors that are able to perceive our eyes, bright and amazing. But man is not the only living thing on this planet. Animals and insects also see objects, colors, night shapes? How do flies or bees see our room, for example, or a flower?

Eyes of an insect

Modern science with the help of special instruments has managed to see the world through the eyes of different animals. This discovery was a sensation in its time. It turns out that many of our smaller brothers, and especially insects, see quite the wrong picture that we see. Do they see flies at all? Yes, but not at all, and it turns out that we fly, and other flying and crawling, we live like in one world, but quite unlike.

It's all about the structure of the eye. In insects, he is not alone, or rather, not entirely alone. The eye of an insect is a thousand small eyes, or facets, or ommatidia assembled together. They look like cone lenses. Each such ommatidy sees a different, only accessible part of the picture. How do flies see? The image they are observing looks like a picture, assembled from a mosaic, or a puzzle.

The visual acuity of insects depends on the number of ommatidia. The most sighted is the dragonfly, she has ommatidia - already about 30 thousand. Butterflies are also sighted - about 17 thousand, for comparison: the fly has 4 thousand, the bee has 5. The most visually impaired is the ant, its eye holds only 100 facets.

Circular defense

Another ability of insects, distinct from human, is the possibility of a circular survey. The eye-lens is able to see everything at 360 ^degrees . Among the mammals, the largest angle of view of the hare is 180 ^° . Therefore, he is nicknamed oblique, and what to do if there are so many enemies. The lion is not afraid of enemies, and his eyes are less than 30 ^{about the} horizon. In small insects, nature compensated for the lack of growth by the ability to see everyone who creeps up to them. The more different is the visual perception of insects, so this is the speed of changing the picture. During a fast flight, they manage to notice everything that people can not contemplate at such a speed. For example, how do flies see TV? If our eye was the same as a fly or a bee, twisting the film would have to be ten times faster. To catch a fly from behind is almost impossible, it sees the swing of the hand faster than it occurs. Man seems insect a slow tortoise, and a turtle is generally a motionless stone.

Colors of rainbow

Almost all insects are colorblind. They distinguish colors, but in their own way. It is interesting that the eyes of insects and even some mammals do not perceive the red color at all or see it as blue, violet. For the bee, the red flowers look black. Plants that need pollination of bees do not bloom red. Most of the bright colors are scarlet, pink, orange, maroon, but not red. Those rare who allow themselves a red outfit are pollinated in a different way. Here such interrelation in the nature. It is difficult to imagine how scientists managed to find out how flies see the coloring of the room, but it turns out that their favorite color is yellow, and blue and green irritates them. Here and so. To the kitchen was flies less, just need to properly paint it.

Do the 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 and does not allow her to sleep for three days, she dies. Flies see in the dark is bad. These are insects with round eyes, but short-sighted. They do not need eyes to look for food.

Unlike flies, worker bees see well at night, which allows them to work on night shifts too. At night, flowers smell more vigorously and rivals for nectar less.

Well see dung beetles at night , but the American cockroach is recognized as the undisputed leader in sight in the dark.

Item form

It is interesting to perceive the shape of an object by different insects. Specificity is that they may not perceive simple forms that are not necessary for their viability. Bees, butterflies do not see objects of simple forms, especially immovable ones, but they are attracted to everything that has complex shapes of flowers, especially if they move, swing. This explains, in particular, the fact that bees and wasps rarely sting a person standing motionless, and if they sting, then into the lips area, when he talks (moves his lips). Flies and some other insects people do not perceive, they sit on it simply in search of food, which they look for by smell and see sensors on their paws.

General features of insect sight

• Red color is only able to distinguish butterflies - they pollinate rare flowers of this range.
• The structure of the eye in all faceted, the difference - in the number of ommatidia.
• Trichromasia, or the ability to transform colors into three main ones: violet, green and ultraviolet.
• Ability to break and reflect light rays and see a picture of the surrounding reality entirely.
• Ability to view pictures that change very quickly.
• Insects know how to navigate the sunlight, so night butterflies fly to the lamp.
• Binocular vision helps predators in the insect world to accurately determine the distances to their victims.