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March 18, 2008
Do You See What I See?
| This is obviously a... |
But can you guess what this
is? |
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See here
for details.
Surprise! It's still the same bee. "How can it be the same bee?,"
you ask. Well, suppose for a moment that you are a worker bee. Your
primary responsibility as a worker bee is to go out and find flowers
with all the other worker bees. To know where the flowers are you
not only have to recognize another bee from your hive, but also be
able to watch its movements which tell you where all the flowers are.
The problem is you don't see a bee the same way a human does. That's
because your eye is actually a compound eye made up of literally hundreds
of single eyes, each with its own lens and each looking in a slightly
different direction. The bee's brain processes all of the images that
the eye sends to it. This is the way that a bee visually interprets
its world.
Does a bee see a bee as a me sees a bee? Not exactly. That's because
the bee sees infra-red light waves being reflected off of the surface
of the object at which it is looking. Humans cannot detect infra-red
light waves with the naked eye.
Dogs also have different kinds of vision from humans. Although it
was once thought that dogs could only see in black and white, this
is untrue. They do, however, have a restricted ability to see the
whole visible spectrum. This is thought to be due to the fact that
dogs were primarily nocturnal animals before they were domesticated
and so color perception was not so necessary.
Despite the differences, the vision of humans, bees and dogs all developed
to respond most favorably to their particular environment. Most of
the heat and light on Earth comes from the Sun. If our nearest star
was much hotter or brighter, or our planet was in a two-star system,
then our eyes might have developed quite differently.  |
