hechizoh asked:
So i was reading one of sy mongomery's books recently and she talkes about how wolf spiders can see the moon. Can a lot of insects, like, not see her?
bunjywunjy answered:
I’ll tell you a secret: most arthropod eyes are incredibly shitty.
they may have a near-360-degrees of view, but most insects eyes simply aren’t on the same level as yours, and it’s because of physics!
see, each of those individual bumps on those eyes up there is a convex lens, which focuses light onto a retina to form a picture of their surroundings.
however, the power of a lens dramatically decreases the smaller it is, because small lenses capture less light to make into an image!
to these animals, the world is a brightly colored blur that extends out for a few feet around them, and ends there. so no, they CANNOT see the moon. weep for them.
to insects, humans have god-level foresight and prescience! HOW DID YOU KNOW THERE WAS FOOD OVER THERE, HUMAN. TELL ME HOW.
but some spiders are different.
see that? those eyes are completely smooth! jumping spiders in particular have developed eyes with a single massive (for a bug) lens on the outside, and a second focusing lens on the inside, giving them single-image vision much like your own.
the diagram of their eyes looks like a pair of binoculars, and their focusing power is completely nuts, enough so to make up for that underpowered lens!
so yes, some spiders CAN see the moon! take solace in this fact.
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