Insects have simple eyes. Brief description of the class insects

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

insect eyes

Modern science, with the help of special instruments, has been able to see the world through the eyes of different animals. This discovery became a sensation in its time. It turns out that many of our smaller brothers, and especially insects, see a completely different picture from the one we see. Do flies even see? Yes, but not at all like that, and it turns out that we and flies, and other flying and crawling ones, seem to live in the same world, but completely different.

It's all about Insects, he is not alone, or rather, not entirely alone. The eye of an insect is a collection of thousands of facets or ommatidia. They look like cone lenses. Each such ommatidia sees a different part of the picture, accessible only to it. How do flies see? The image they observe 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, it has an ommatidia - about 30 thousand. Butterflies are also sighted - about 17 thousand, for comparison: a fly has 4 thousand, a bee - 5. The most visually impaired is the ant, its eye contains only 100 facets.

All-round defense

Another ability of insects that differs from humans is the ability to see all around. The eye-lens is capable of seeing everything at 360 o. Among mammals, the hare has the largest visual angle - 180 degrees. That’s why he’s nicknamed the oblique one, but what to do if there are so many enemies. The lion is not afraid of enemies, and his eyes look at less than 30 degrees of the horizon. In small insects, nature compensated for the lack of growth with the ability to see everyone who creeps up on them. What else distinguishes the visual perception of insects is the speed at which the picture changes. During a fast flight, they manage to notice everything that people cannot see at such speed. For example, how do flies see TV? If our eyes were like those of a fly or a bee, we would need to spin the film ten times faster. It is almost impossible to catch a fly from behind; it sees the wave of the hand faster than it occurs. A person seems like a slow turtle to an insect, and a turtle looks like a generally motionless stone.

Rainbow colors

Almost all insects are color blind. They distinguish colors, but in their own way. It is interesting that the eyes of insects and even some mammals do not perceive red color at all or see it as blue or violet. To a bee, red flowers look black. Plants that need bee pollination do not bloom red. Majority bright colors scarlet, pink, orange, burgundy, but not red. Those rare ones that allow themselves a red outfit are pollinated in a different way. This is the relationship in nature. It’s hard to imagine how scientists managed to figure out how flies see the colors of a room, but it turns out that their favorite color is yellow, and blue and green irritate them. Just like that. To have fewer flies in your kitchen, you just need to paint it correctly.

Can flies see in the dark?

Flies, like most flying insects, sleep at night. Yes, yes, they need sleep too. If a fly is constantly driven away and not allowed to sleep for three days, it dies. Flies see poorly in the dark. These are insects with round eyes, but shortsighted. They do not need eyes to find food.

Unlike flies, worker bees see well at night, which allows them to work in night shift Same. At night, the flowers smell more intensely and there are fewer competitors for nectar.

They see well at night, but the undoubted leader in vision in the dark is the American cockroach.

Item Shape

The perception of the shape of an object by different insects is interesting. The specificity is that they may not perceive simple forms at all, which are not necessary for their viability. Bees and butterflies do not see objects of simple shapes, especially stationary ones, but they are attracted to everything that has complex flower shapes, especially if they move or sway. This explains, in particular, the fact that bees and wasps rarely sting a person standing motionless, and if they do, it is in the area of the lips when he is talking (moving 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.

General features of insect vision

Only butterflies can distinguish red color - they pollinate rare flowers such a range.
All eyes have a facet structure, the difference being in the number of ommatidia.
Trichromasia, or the ability to transform colors into three primary colors: violet, green and ultraviolet.
The ability to break and reflect light rays and see the whole picture of the surrounding reality.
The ability to look at pictures that change very quickly.
Insects know how to navigate by sunlight, so moths flock to the lamp.
Binocular vision helps predators in the insect world accurately determine distances to their prey.

Both flies and bees have five eyes. Three simple eyes are located in the upper part of the head (one might say, on the crown), and two complex, or facet, eyes are located on the sides of the head. The compound eyes of flies, bees (as well as butterflies, dragonflies and some other insects) are the subject of enthusiastic study by scientists. The fact is that these organs of vision are arranged in a very interesting way. They are made up of thousands of individual hexagons, or, in other words, scientific language, facets. Each of the facets is a miniature peephole that gives an image of a separate part of the object. The housefly's compound eyes have approximately 4,000 facets, worker bee- 5000, for a drone - 8000, for a butterfly - up to 17,000, for a dragonfly - up to 30,000. It turns out that the eyes of insects send to their brain several thousand images of individual parts of an object, which, although they merge into an image of the object as a whole, but all this object looks like it was made of a mosaic.

Why are compound eyes needed? It is believed that with their help insects orient themselves in flight. While simple eyes Designed for viewing objects that are nearby. So, if a bee's compound eyes are removed or covered, it behaves as if it were blind. If the simple eyes are sealed, then it seems that the insect has a slow reaction.

1,2 -Compound (compound) eyes of a bee or fly
3 -three simple eyes of a bee or fly

Five eyes allow insects to cover 360 degrees, that is, to see everything that happens in front, on both sides and behind. Maybe that’s why it’s so difficult to get close to a fly unnoticed. And if you consider that compound eyes see a moving object much better than a stationary one, then one can only wonder how a person sometimes manages to swat a fly with a newspaper!

Feature of insects with compound eyes catching even the slightest movement is illustrated in the following example: if bees and flies sit down with people to watch a movie, it will seem to them that two-legged viewers are looking at one frame for a long time before moving on to the next. In order for insects to watch a movie (and not individual frames, like a photo), the projector film needs to be spun 10 times faster.

Should we envy the eyes of insects? Probably not. For example, the eyes of a fly see a lot, but are not capable of looking closely. That's why they discover food (a drop of jam, for example) by crawling across the table and literally bumping into it. And bees, due to the peculiarities of their vision, do not distinguish the color red - for them it is black, gray or blue.

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Insect and man look at the world literally with different eyes. The eyes of all insects - be it a housefly, a hornet, a butterfly or a beetle - are complex (faceted), consisting of individual ocelli. (Many species also have simple eyes.) Some butterflies and dragonflies have a compound eye made up of 30,000 elements; ants have only six. Each eye has its own lens, focal length which is fixed and does not accommodate. The insect sees a mosaic picture (this is what a greatly enlarged newspaper photograph looks like - made up of individual specks) and poorly distinguishes the shape of objects. But the compound eye perfectly sees movement, which helps the insect avoid predators and detect prey.

The eyes of flies and dragonflies occupy most of the surface of the head, providing an almost 360 degree view, so that predators can be seen approaching from behind, above and below. Ants, which spend most of their time underground, make do with underdeveloped eyes, and some species are blind.

The structure of the compound eye

How many eyes does a dragonfly have?

For predatory and fast-flying insects, vision is great value. Their eyes are made up of many individual eyes. Such a compound eye in dragonflies can consist of 30,000 individual lenses. Passing through lenses and transparent crystal cones, the light reaches sensitive cells. They turn it into electrical impulses, which are then transmitted to the brain, where a complete image is collected. This picture seems to be divided into cells and consists of many dots - like a newspaper photograph or a screensaver on a TV. In addition to compound eyes, many insects have three small eyes on the forehead - with many light-sensitive cells and one common lens. Insects need them to determine the degree of illumination of the surrounding space and adjust the position of their body when flying. In the dragonfly, individual ocelli within the compound eyes are clearly visible. Relatively simple in terms of structure, the additional eye in the center of the forehead looks like a drop of water.

Dragonfly flight speed

Large dragonflies usually fly at speeds of about 30 km/h. One Australian species of dragonfly can reach speeds of up to 58 km/h when flying short distances. However, the champions in high-speed flights are horseflies. American look Horse flies reach speeds of up to 70 km/h. Thanks to their direct muscles, dragonflies can move their wings in all directions and thus even fly backwards.

Do insects see colors?

Human visual cells recognize three primary colors: blue, green and red. All other colors arise from mixing these three primary colors. Every honey bee separate eye also contains three types of cells, which, however, distinguish between blue, green and ultraviolet light. Bees do not perceive the color red: it appears to them as dark gray or black. Ultraviolet light provides bees, ants and flies with information about the direction of vibrations of polarized light, which are analyzed by the insect's brain. Therefore, insects, even in high clouds, can assess the location of the sun and navigate the area. Water bugs and smoothies also use data on polarized light, with which they see water surfaces reflecting light in flight.

What is resolution?

A person can perceive 20 alternating images per second. If this happens faster, then the picture is seen in motion. This effect is used when shooting films. The picture on a computer monitor and TV screen is updated 50 times per second and therefore appears constant. The eye of a dung fly can distinguish individual images within four thousandths of a second. Honey bees see 300 pictures per second.

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Varieties of the structure of the organs of vision

In insects, eyes can be presented in three varieties:

(faceted);
(dorsal, ocelli);
larval (lateral, larval). (photo)

They have different structure and unequal ability to see.

Compound eyes are found in most insects, and the more highly developed the latter are, the better their visual organs are usually developed. also called faceted, because they outer surface It is represented by a set of lenses located next to each other - facets.

Ommatidium

A (left) - appositional ommatidium,

B (right) - superposition ommatidium

1 - axons of visual cells, 2 - retinal cells,

3 - cornea, 4 - crystalline cone,

5 - pigment cells, 6 - light guide, 7 - rhabdom

A compound eye consists of a different, usually large number of individual structural units- ommatidia. include a number of structures that provide conduction, refraction of light (facet, corneal cells, crystalline cone) and perception of visual signals (retinal cells, rhabdom, nerve cells). In addition, each has a pigment insulation device, due to which it is fully or partially protected from side rays.

Diagram of the structure of a simple eye

Of all types of eyes, insects have the weakest ability to see. According to some reports, they do not perform at all visual function, and are only responsible for improving the function of the compound eyes. This, in particular, is proven by the fact that in insects there are practically no simple ones without complex ones. In addition, when the compound eyes are painted over, insects cease to orient themselves in space, even if they have well-defined eyes.

Features of insect vision

Dedicated to the study of insect vision huge amount scientific works. Due to such interest on the part of specialists, many of the features of the eyes of Insecta have now been reliably clarified. However, the structure of the visual organs in these organisms is so diverse that the quality of vision, perception of color and volume, discrimination between moving and stationary objects, recognition of familiar visual images and other properties of vision vary enormously in different groups insects The following factors can influence this: in a compound eye - the structure of ommatidia and their number, convexity, location and shape of the eyes; in simple eyes and - their number and subtle structural features, which can be represented by a significant variety of options. The vision of bees has been studied best to date.

The movement of an object plays a certain role in the perception of shape. Insects are more likely to land on flowers that sway in the wind than on stationary ones. dragonflies rush after moving prey, and male butterflies react to flying females and have trouble seeing sitting ones. This is probably due to a certain frequency of irritation of the ommatidia of the eyes during movement, flickering and flickering.

Recognizing familiar objects

Insects recognize familiar objects not only by color and shape, but also by the arrangement of objects around them, so the idea of the exceptional primitiveness of their vision cannot be called true. For example, the Sand Wasp finds the entrance to a burrow, guided by the objects that are located around it (grass, stones). If they are removed or their location is changed, this can confuse the insect.

Perception of distance

This feature is best studied using the example of dragonflies, ground beetles and other predatory insects.

The ability to determine distance is due to the presence of higher insects binocular vision, that is, two eyes whose fields of vision partially intersect. The structural features of the eyes determine how large the distance available for viewing of a particular insect is. For example, jumping beetles react to prey and pounce on it when they are at a distance of 15 cm from the object.

Luminous movement

Many insects move in such a way that they constantly maintain the same angle of incidence of light on the retina. Thus, sun rays are a kind of compass by which the insect is oriented. By the same principle, moths move in the direction of artificial light sources.

It is believed that a person receives up to 90% of knowledge about the outside world with the help of his stereoscopic vision. Hares have acquired lateral vision, thanks to which they can see objects located to the side and even behind them. In deep-sea fish, the eyes can occupy up to half of the head, and the parietal “third eye” of the lamprey allows it to navigate well in the water. Snakes can only see a moving object, but the eyes of the peregrine falcon are recognized as the most vigilant in the world, capable of tracking down prey from a height of 8 km!

But how do representatives of the most numerous and diverse class of living beings on Earth - insects - see the world? Along with vertebrates, to which they are inferior only in body size, it is insects that have the most perfect vision and complex structures. optical systems eyes. Although the compound eyes of insects do not have accommodation, as a result of which they can be called myopic, they, unlike humans, are able to distinguish extremely fast moving objects. And thanks to the ordered structure of their photoreceptors, many of them have a real “sixth sense” - polarization vision.

Vision fades - my strength,
Two invisible diamond spears...

A. Tarkovsky (1983)

It's hard to overestimate the importance Sveta (electromagnetic radiation visible spectrum) for all inhabitants of our planet. Sunlight serves as the main source of energy for photosynthetic plants and bacteria, and, indirectly through them, for all living organisms of the earth's biosphere. Light directly affects the flow of all diversity life processes animals, from reproduction to seasonal color changes. And, of course, thanks to the perception of light by special sense organs, animals receive significant (and often b O most) of the information about the world around them, they can distinguish the shape and color of objects, determine the movement of bodies, orient themselves in space, etc.

Vision is especially important for animals capable of actively moving in space: it was with the emergence of mobile animals that vision began to form and improve. visual apparatus- the most complex of all known sensory systems. These animals include vertebrates and among invertebrates - cephalopods and insects. It is these groups of organisms that can boast of the most complex organs of vision.

However, the visual apparatus of these groups differs significantly, as does the perception of images. It is believed that insects in general are more primitive compared to vertebrates, not to mention their highest level - mammals, and, naturally, humans. But how different are their visual perceptions? In other words, is the world seen through the eyes of a small creature called a fly much different from ours?

Mosaic of hexagons

The visual system of insects is, in principle, no different from that of other animals and consists of peripheral organs of vision, nerve structures and formations of the central nervous system. But as for the morphology of the visual organs, here the differences are simply striking.

Everyone is familiar with complex faceted insect eyes, which are found in adult insects or in insect larvae developing with incomplete transformation, i.e. without the pupal stage. There are not many exceptions to this rule: these are fleas (order Siphonaptera), fanwings (order Strepsiptera), most silverfish (family Lepismatidae) and the entire class of cryptognathans (Entognatha).

The compound eye looks like the basket of a ripe sunflower: it consists of a set of facets ( ommatidia) - autonomous light radiation receivers that have everything necessary to regulate the light flux and image formation. The number of facets varies greatly: from several in bristletails (order Thysanura) to 30 thousand in dragonflies (order Aeshna). Surprisingly, the number of ommatidia can vary even within one systematic group: for example, a number of species of ground beetles that live in open spaces have well-developed compound eyes with a large number ommatidia, while in ground beetles that live under stones, the eyes are greatly reduced and consist of a small number of ommatidia.

The upper layer of ommatidia is represented by the cornea (lens) - a section of transparent cuticle secreted by special cells, which is a kind of hexagonal biconvex lens. Under the cornea of most insects there is a transparent crystalline cone, the structure of which may vary between different types. In some species, especially those that are nocturnal, there are additional structures in the light-refracting apparatus that play mainly the role of anti-reflective coating and increasing light transmission of the eye.

The image formed by the lens and crystal cone falls on photosensitive retinal(visual) cells, which are a neuron with a short tail-axon. Several retinal cells form a single cylindrical bundle - retinula. Inside each such cell, on the side facing inward, the ommatidium is located rhabdomer- a special formation of many (up to 75–100 thousand) microscopic villi tubes, the membrane of which contains visual pigment. As in all vertebrates, this pigment is rhodopsin- complex colored protein. Due to the huge area of these membranes, the photoreceptor neuron contains large number rhodopsin molecules (for example, in fruit flies Drosophila this number exceeds 100 million!).

Rhabdomeres of all visual cells, combined into rhabdom, and are photosensitive, receptor elements of the compound eye, and all the retinula together constitute an analogue of our retina.

The light-refracting and light-sensitive apparatus of the facet is surrounded along the perimeter by cells with pigments that play the role of light insulation: thanks to them, the light flux, when refracted, reaches the neurons of only one ommatidia. But this is how the facets are arranged in the so-called photopic eyes adapted to bright daylight.

For species leading a twilight or nocturnal lifestyle, eyes of a different type are characteristic - scotopic. Such eyes have a number of adaptations to insufficient light flux, for example, very large rhabdomeres. In addition, in the ommatidia of such eyes, light-isolating pigments can freely migrate within the cells, due to which the light flux can reach the visual cells of neighboring ommatidia. This phenomenon underlies the so-called dark adaptation insect eyes - increased sensitivity of the eye in low light.

When rhabdomeres absorb light photons in retinal cells, nerve impulses, which are sent along axons to the paired optic lobes of the insect brain. Each optic lobe has three associative centers, where the flow of visual information simultaneously coming from many facets is processed.

From one to thirty

According to ancient legends, people once had a “third eye” responsible for extrasensory perception. There is no evidence for this, but the same lamprey and other animals, such as the tufted lizard and some amphibians, have unusual light-sensitive organs in the “wrong” place. And in this sense, insects do not lag behind vertebrates: in addition to the usual compound eyes, they have small additional ocelli - ocelli located on the frontoparietal surface, and stemms- on the sides of the head.

Ocelli are found mainly in well-flying insects: adults (in species with complete metamorphosis) and larvae (in species with incomplete metamorphosis). As a rule, these are three ocelli arranged in the form of a triangle, but sometimes the middle one or two lateral ones may be missing. The structure of ocelli is similar to ommatidia: under a light-refracting lens they have a layer of transparent cells (analogous to a crystalline cone) and a retinal retina.

Stemmas can be found in insect larvae that develop with complete metamorphosis. Their number and location varies depending on the species: on each side of the head there can be from one to thirty ocelli. In caterpillars, six ocelli are more common, arranged so that each of them has a separate field of vision.

In different orders of insects, stemma may differ from each other in structure. These differences are possibly due to their origin from different morphological structures. Thus, the number of neurons in one eye can range from several units to several thousand. Naturally, this affects the insects’ perception of the surrounding world: if some of them can only see the movement of light and dark spots, then others are able to recognize the size, shape and color of objects.

As we see, both stemmas and ommatidia are analogues of single facets, albeit modified. However, insects have other “backup” options. Thus, some larvae (especially from the order Diptera) are able to recognize light even with completely shaded eyes using photosensitive cells located on the surface of the body. And some species of butterflies have so-called genital photoreceptors.

All such photoreceptor zones are structured in a similar way and represent a cluster of several neurons under a transparent (or translucent) cuticle. Due to such additional “eyes,” dipteran larvae avoid open spaces, and female butterflies use them when laying eggs in shaded areas.

Faceted Polaroid

What can the complex eyes of insects do? As is known, any optical radiation can have three characteristics: brightness, spectrum(wavelength) and polarization(orientation of oscillations of the electromagnetic component).

Insects use the spectral characteristics of light to register and recognize objects in the surrounding world. Almost all of them are capable of perceiving light in the range from 300–700 nm, including the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, inaccessible to vertebrates.

As a rule, different colors perceived various areas compound eye insects Such “local” sensitivity can vary even within the same species, depending on the sex of the individual. Often, the same ommatidia may contain different color receptors. So, in butterflies of the genus Papilio two photoreceptors have a visual pigment with an absorption maximum at 360, 400 or 460 nm, two more at 520 nm, and the rest between 520 and 600 nm (Kelber et al., 2001).

But this is not all that the insect eye can do. As mentioned above, in visual neurons, the photoreceptor membrane of the rhabdomeral microvilli is folded into a tube of circular or hexagonal cross-section. Due to this, some rhodopsin molecules do not participate in light absorption due to the fact that the dipole moments of these molecules are located parallel to the path of the light beam (Govardovsky and Gribakin, 1975). As a result, the microvillus acquires dichroism- the ability to absorb light differently depending on its polarization. The increase in the polarization sensitivity of the ommatidium is also facilitated by the fact that the molecules of the visual pigment are not randomly located in the membrane, as in humans, but are oriented in one direction, and, moreover, are rigidly fixed.

If the eye is able to distinguish between two light sources based on their spectral characteristics, regardless of the intensity of the radiation, we can talk about color vision . But if he does this by fixing the polarization angle, as in this case, we have every reason to talk about polarization vision of insects.

How do insects perceive polarized light? Based on the structure of the ommatidium, it can be assumed that all photoreceptors must be simultaneously sensitive to both a certain length(s) of light waves and the degree of polarization of light. But in this case there may be serious problems- the so-called false color perception. Thus, light reflected from the glossy surface of leaves or water surface is partially polarized. In this case, the brain, analyzing photoreceptor data, may make a mistake in assessing the color intensity or shape of the reflective surface.

Insects have learned to successfully cope with such difficulties. Thus, in a number of insects (primarily flies and bees), a rhabdom is formed in ommatidia that perceive only color closed type, in which rhabdomeres do not contact each other. At the same time, they also have ommatidia with the usual straight rhabdoms, which are also sensitive to polarized light. In bees, such facets are located along the edge of the eye (Wehner and Bernard, 1993). In some butterflies, distortions in color perception are eliminated due to significant curvature of the microvilli of the rhabdomeres (Kelber et al., 2001).

In many other insects, especially Lepidoptera, the usual straight rhabdoms are retained in all ommatidia, so their photoreceptors are capable of simultaneously perceiving both “colored” and polarized light. Moreover, each of these receptors is sensitive only to a certain polarization angle of preference and a certain wavelength of light. This complex visual perception assists butterflies in feeding and oviposition (Kelber et al., 2001).

Unfamiliar Land

You can delve endlessly into the features of the morphology and biochemistry of the insect eye and still find it difficult to answer such a simple and at the same time incredibly difficult question: How do insects see?

It is difficult for a person to even imagine the images that arise in the brain of insects. But it should be noted that it is popular today mosaic theory of vision, according to which the insect sees the image in the form of a kind of puzzle of hexagons, does not entirely accurately reflect the essence of the problem. The fact is that although each single facet captures a separate image, which is only part of the whole picture, these images can overlap with images obtained from neighboring facets. Therefore, the image of the world obtained using the huge eye of a dragonfly, consisting of thousands of miniature facet cameras, and the “modest” six-faceted eye of an ant will be very different.

Regarding visual acuity (resolution, i.e., the ability to distinguish the degree of dismemberment of objects), then in insects it is determined by the number of facets per unit convex surface eyes, i.e. their angular density. Unlike humans, insect eyes do not have accommodation: the radius of curvature of the light-conducting lens does not change. In this sense, insects can be called myopic: they see more details the closer they are to the object of observation.

At the same time, insects with compound eyes are able to distinguish very fast moving objects, which is explained by the high contrast and low inertia of their visual system. For example, a person can distinguish only about twenty flashes per second, but a bee can distinguish ten times more! This property is vital for fast-flying insects that need to make decisions in flight.

The color images perceived by insects can also be much more complex and unusual than ours. For example, a flower that appears white to us often hides in its petals many pigments that can reflect ultraviolet light. And in the eyes of pollinating insects, it sparkles with many colorful shades - pointers on the way to nectar.

It is believed that insects “do not see” the color red, which in “ pure form"and is extremely rare in nature (with the exception of tropical plants pollinated by hummingbirds). However, flowers colored red often contain other pigments that can reflect short-wave radiation. And if you consider that many insects are capable of perceiving not three primary colors, like a person, but more (sometimes up to five!), then their visual images should be simply an extravaganza of colors.

And finally, the “sixth sense” of insects is polarization vision. With its help, insects manage to see in the world around them what humans can only get a faint idea of using special optical filters. In this way, insects can accurately determine the location of the sun in a cloudy sky and use polarized light as a “celestial compass.” And aquatic insects in flight detect bodies of water by partially polarized light reflected from the water surface (Schwind, 1991). But what kind of images they “see” is simply impossible for a person to imagine...

Anyone who, for one reason or another, is interested in the vision of insects may have a question: why have they not developed a chamber eye similar to to the human eye, with a pupil, lens and other devices?

This question was once answered exhaustively by the outstanding American theoretical physicist, Nobel laureate R. Feynman: “This is hindered somewhat interesting reasons. First of all, the bee is too small: if it had an eye similar to ours, but correspondingly smaller, then the size of the pupil would be on the order of 30 microns, and therefore the diffraction would be so great that the bee would still not be able to see better. Too much small eye- this is not very good. If such an eye is made of sufficient size, then it should be no smaller than the head of the bee itself. The value of a compound eye lies in the fact that it takes up practically no space - just a thin layer on the surface of the head. So before you give advice to a bee, don't forget that it has its own problems!

Therefore, it is not surprising that insects have chosen their own path in visual cognition of the world. Yes, and in order to see it from the point of view of insects, we would have to acquire huge compound eyes in order to maintain our usual visual acuity. It is unlikely that such an acquisition would be useful to us from an evolutionary point of view. To each his own!

Literature
1. Tyshchenko V. P. Physiology of insects. M.: graduate School, 1986, 304 p.
2. Klowden M. J. Physiological Systems in Insects. Academ Press, 2007. 688 p.
3. Nation J. L. Insect Physiology and Biochemistry. Second Edition: CRC Press, 2008.