Animal Vision: Ocelli, Compound Eyes, and Camera Eyes

Did you know that there are many different kinds of eyes? And that not all of them even see images? Different creatures need different kinds of eyes to help them survive in their environment.For example, chameleon's eyes move independently of one another so that they can see two different directions at once. That way, one eye can be searching for food while the other one is watching out for predators.A simple eye is an eye that relies on one lens to see. A lens is the part of the eye that catches and focuses light in order to create an image. Humans and large animals have a single lens eye structure most commonly referred to as a camera eye. Much like a camera, our eyes use a single lens to focus light on the retina in order to create an image in the brain. The retina is a layer of tissue where the image that passes throughcornea(the eye's window) and lens gets sent to the brain.Think of what a jellyfish or a sea star looks like. Can you picture where the eyes are? Probably not! That's because they have simple eyes calledocelli or eyespots. Eyespots don't have lenses and are just used tosignal lightness or darkness to the brain. Some animals just have eyespots, but other animals have them in addition to compound eyes.The jumping spider has has eight eyes that work together. Four of them detect motion, twofocus on depth perception (how far away something is)and two createdetailed images.Compound eyes can be composed ofup tothousands of much smaller lenses, allowing them to have a very large view angle in comparison to simple eyes. While the range of vision in a compound eye is much wider than simple eyes, its overall resolution, or clarity, is much less.

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