e_moon60 (e_moon60) wrote,
e_moon60
e_moon60

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The Eyes have it: Neuroptera Comparison

One of the characteristics of the Order Neuroptera is even stranger eyes than most insects have  (they all have compound eyes, but a lot of them look, esp. from a distance, like little beads, all one color or maybe two.)    For a fun comparison, here are three different insects in Neuroptera, showing how different their eyes are:

      

On the left is a green lacewing, whose eyes appear as metallic green with wine-red centers.   They might be even more interesting, but this lacewing was dancing in the wind from a strand of what I think was spider-web, so this is the best picture I could get. 

In the middle is yesterday's adult ant-lion, whose eyes are multicolored in fire-opal shades of orange, green, blue, and golden, little chip-like "sections" that probably represent one ocellus each.

On the right is an owl-fly, whose eyes each look like two compound eyes overlapping (that's right--this is the eye on the right side of its head and there's another, just as odd, on the left.)  Its eyes are bigger, proportionally, than the eyes of the other two.  Must be very interesting neural network to integrate the images coming from those incredible eyes.



Tags: insect, photography
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