When a person sees a fly in his house, the first thing he tries to do is kill it. The insect is an irritant for the household and he has to activate all his unique abilities in order to anticipate the approaching danger. And she succeeds. Unwittingly, people are puzzled by how many eyes a fly has, that it is always able to flee in time.
Room dweller
The housefly or housefly belongs to the family of true flies. And even though the topic of our review concerns all species, without exception, we will allow ourselves, for convenience, to consider the entire family using the example of this very familiar species of domestic parasites as an example.
The common housefly is a very unremarkable insect in appearance. It has a gray-black body color, with some hints of yellowness in the lower abdomen. The length of an adult rarely exceeds 1 cm. The insect has two pairs of wings and compound eyes.
The device of the visual organs
A house or common fly has a black-gray body color up to 1 cm long and a slightly yellowish abdomen, 2 pairs of gray wings and a head with large eyes. She belongs to the most ancient inhabitants of the planet, as evidenced by the data of archaeologists who discovered specimens dating back to 145 million years.
When examining the head of a fly under a microscope, you can see that it has very original volumetric eyes located on both sides. As you can see in the photo of the fly's eyes, they visually look like a mosaic made up of 6-sided structural units, which are called facets or ommatidia, similar to the structure of honeycombs. Translated from French, the word "fasette" means facets. Due to this, the eyes are called faceted.
How to understand what a fly sees in comparison with a person whose vision is binocular, that is, it is made up of two pictures that 2 eyes see? In insects, the visual apparatus is more complex: each eye consists of 4,000 facets, showing a small part of the visible image. Therefore, the formation of a general picture of the outside world for them occurs according to the principle of "collecting puzzles", which allows us to speak about the uniqueness of the structure of the brain of flies, capable of processing more than 100 frames of images per second.
On a note!
Not only flies, but also other insects have faceted vision: bees have 5,000 facets, butterflies have 17,000, and record-holding dragonflies have up to 30,000 ommatidia.
Faceted eyes - what is the point?
The fly's visual system includes two large eyes located at the edge of the head. Each of them has a complex structure and consists of many small hexagonal facets, hence the name of this type of vision as faceted.
In total, the fly eye has more than 3.5 thousand of these microscopic components in its structure. And each of them is capable of capturing only a tiny part of the overall image, transmitting information about the resulting mini-picture to the brain, which collects all the puzzles of this picture together.
If you compare faceted vision and binocular vision, which a person has, for example, you can quickly see that the purpose and properties of each are diametrically opposite.
More developed animals tend to concentrate their vision on a specific narrow area or on a specific object.It is important for insects not so much to see a specific object as to quickly navigate in space and notice the approach of danger.
Insects under the microscope
Microscope technology allows you to get a picture of any substance or creature, magnified so many times that the human eye can perceive it. We began to consider various matters with the help of this device a long time ago, but recently it has become popular to study what is in close proximity with us and can contact.
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Both butterflies and parasites managed to be targeted by the powerful device. On closer inspection, they all turned out to be not just ugly, but a real flying or jumping nightmare.
A fly under a microscope looks, to put it mildly, strange. Slightly different from what we used to see her, although the similarity is visible thanks to a pair of large compound eyes, broken into microscopic segments.
Why is it so difficult to catch?
This pest is really very difficult to catch by surprise. The reason is not only in the increased reaction of the insect in comparison with a slow person and the ability to jump off the spot almost instantly. Mainly, such a high level of reaction is due to the timely perception of the brain of this insect of changes and movements within the radius of view of its eyes.
The fly's vision allows it to see almost 360 degrees. This type of vision is also called panoramic. That is, each eye gives a 180-degree view. This pest is almost impossible to catch by surprise, even if you approach her from behind. The eyes of this insect allow you to control the entire space around it, thereby providing one hundred percent circular visual defense.
There is also an interesting feature of the fly's visual perception of the color palette. After all, almost all species perceive differently certain colors familiar to our eyes. Some of them do not distinguish insects at all, others look different to them, in different colors.
By the way, in addition to two compound eyes, the fly has three more simple eyes. They are located in the interval between the facets, on the frontal head. Unlike compound eyes, these three are used by insects to recognize an object in close proximity.
Thus, to the question of how many eyes an ordinary fly still has, we can now safely answer - 5. Two complex faceted, divided into thousands of ommatidia (facets) and designed for the most extensive control over changes in the environment around it, and three simple eyes , allowing, as they say, to focus.
Eyes and IT technologies
By studying the structure of the fly's visual organs, researchers at the University of Illinois were able to develop a facet camera. Outwardly, it resembles an insect's eye, consisting of 180 faceted chambers.
Each tiny lens has its own photosensor. Therefore, microchambers operate independently of each other. Each fragment captured by the camera is sent to the microprocessor, where a panoramic picture is formed. The width of the finished image corresponds to a viewing angle of 180 degrees.
Important: such an invention does not need focusing.
Objects located in the immediate vicinity of the cameras are visible as clearly as those located at a distance. The shape of the electronic fly's eye can be changed as needed. This is possible thanks to the elastic polymer from which the device is made.
Thanks to the study of such an insect as a fly, it was possible to obtain a unique camera that can be used in video surveillance. Also, such devices can be used to create new computers and laptops.
World view
We have already said that flies are color blind, and they either not distinguish all colors, or see objects we are used to in other color tones. Also, this species is able to distinguish between ultraviolet light.
It should also be said that for all the uniqueness of their vision, these pests practically do not see in the dark. The fly sleeps at night, because its eyes do not allow this insect to hunt in the dark.
Moreover, these pests tend to perceive well only smaller and moving objects. An insect does not distinguish between such large objects as a person, for example. For the fly, this is just another part of the interior environment.
But the approach of the hand to the insect, his eyes perfectly catch and promptly give the necessary signal to the brain. As well as seeing any other rapidly approaching danger, these sneaks will not be difficult, thanks to the sophisticated and reliable tracking system that nature has equipped them with.
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How flies see
On average, the visual acuity of flies exceeds human capabilities by 3 times.
Since the eyes of flies are large and convex, consisting of ommatidia (facets) on all sides of the surface of the eye, this structure calmly allows the insect to see at once in all directions - to the sides, up, forward and backward. Such panoramic vision (also called circular) helps the fly to notice the danger in time and retreat away immediately, which is why it is so difficult to swat it. Moreover, the fly is not only physically able to see in different directions at once, but also purposefully look around, as if observing all the space around it at the same time.
It is the numerous ommatidia that allow the fly to follow flickering and very fast moving objects without losing the clarity of the image. Relatively speaking, if a person's vision is capable of capturing 16 frames per second, then a fly is 250-300 frames / sec. This quality is necessary for flies not only to catch movements from the side, but also for orientation and high-quality vision during fast flight.
As for the color of surrounding objects, flies see not only the primary colors, but also their subtlest shades, including ultraviolet, which nature is not given to see. It turns out that the fly sees the world around it more rosy than people. By the way, these insects also see the volume of objects.
How many eyes do bees have?
A separate issue is the visual organs. If you look at the honey bee from afar, then the question: "How many eyes does a bee have?" most likely you will answer: "Two". And you will be wrong. Because there are actually five of them! Two huge compound eyes located on the sides of the head and looking like two ovals are visually confusing. There are three more simple eyes located on the crown of the insect, but they are visible on closer inspection. Let us dwell on the question of how many eyes the bees have.
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Colors of rainbow
Almost all insects are color blind. They distinguish colors, but in their own way. Interestingly, the eyes of insects and even some mammals do not perceive red at all, or see it as blue, purple. To a bee, red flowers appear black. Plants that need bee pollination do not bloom red. Most of the bright colors are scarlet, pink, orange, burgundy, but not red. Those rare who allow themselves a red outfit are pollinated in a different way. This is the kind of relationship in nature. It's hard to imagine how scientists managed to figure out how flies see the color of a room, but it turns out that their favorite color is yellow, and blue and green annoy them. So that's it.To have fewer flies in the kitchen, you just need to paint it correctly.
Item shape
The perception of the shape of an object by different insects is interesting. The specificity is that they may not at all perceive simple forms that are not needed for their viability. Bees, butterflies do not see objects of simple shapes, especially motionless ones, but they are attracted by 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 standing motionless, and if they do, then in the area of the lips when he talks (moves his lips). Flies and some other insects do not perceive a person, they sit on him simply in search of food, which they look for by smell and see with sensors on their paws.
Provident nature: fly organs
Look at the picture. Is that how you imagined this creature? Being so tiny, the fly is endowed with all the means that it needs to exist. It is thanks to these growths on the legs that she can hold on to any steep surface, hang directly on the ceiling and move as she wants. Thanks to the villi that cover the fly's body, moisture that gets on it does not linger on the body.
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The fly's eyes, as can be clearly seen, are divided into equal sections. Some species of this insect also have special villi on them. With the help of such an organ, the fly sees everything.
The wings are also divided into sections. They are so thin that no one can see the thickness. This is only possible under a microscope. Semitransparent or dark, iridescent or monochrome - flies are surprisingly diverse creatures.
Amazing world
We are surrounded by a lot of amazing creatures, which at first glance seem to us the most ordinary.
Circular defense
Another ability of insects, which is distinguishable from a human, is the possibility of a circular view. The eye lens is able to see everything at 360o. Among mammals, the hare has the largest angle of view - 180 °. Therefore, he is nicknamed oblique, but what to do if there are so many enemies. The lion is not afraid of enemies, and his eyes are less than 30o of the horizon. In small insects, nature compensated for the lack of growth with the ability to see everyone who sneaks up on them. What else distinguishes the visual perception of insects is the speed of the picture change. During a fast flight, they manage to notice everything that people cannot contemplate at such a speed. For example, how do flies see TV? If our eyes were like those of a fly or a bee, the film would need to be rolled ten times faster. Catching a fly from behind is almost impossible, she sees the wave of the hand faster than it happens. A man seems to an insect as a sluggish tortoise, and a tortoise is generally a motionless stone.
