Compound Camera

Have you ever thought how bees' eyes work?

Bees, House flies, and many other insects possess compound eyes. These compound eyes consist of thousands of individual eye units. Each eye unit contains a separate lens and separate photoreceptors. The range of compound eyes is larger than human eyes, so these insects can see a much larger view around it in comparison to its size. A lot of hypotheses are proposed on how these compound eyes function, but these are just hypotheses; no one really knows how these compound eyes work.

What do you think could have happened if we have had compound eyes too !?!

I don't know, but we have only two eyes and when one of them is not working as good as the other one, we have trouble seeing things, let alone having all these eyes. Also going to an Ophthalmologist will be a great waste of time, now he examines only two and it takes about 30 minutes, so imagine how long it will take him to examine over a couple of thousands....it will be unbelievable.

The real question is "Why don't we have any imaging devices that use multiple lenses instead of a single lens?

All our imaging devices are adapted to one lens; however, just recently, I read this article about artificial compound eyes. In this paper the authors made an artificial micro-camera using this compound eye idea. This lens will be of great importance in endoscopic operations and also in other imaging modalities in medicine and also it will be a leap in the film industry as well.

I guess every creature has got the best eye to serve him, a small fly needs to see a large scale around it to be able to fly freely and since we don't fly, I guess it is okay that we have got only the simple eyes.

If you are an ophthalmologist you can register in MEACO (Middle East Africa Council of ophthalmology) and if you are not, you may also have the opportunity to ask a specialist about the difference between a single lens and multiple lens functions.

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Image credit: by Guety via Wikimedia Commons.