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[ link to www.iflscience.com] Scallops Have Over 200 Eyes That Work Like A High-Tech Telescope
"In some rare visual systems in nature, mirrors are used instead of lenses to produce images,” the study authors wrote. “A remarkable example of such an eye is found in the Pecten scallop, which possesses up to 200 minute eyes lining the mantle tissue.”
The eyes are made up of a multi-layered mosaic of tiny mirrors and square guanine crystals, a highly reflective material found in the natural world. After light enters through a poppy-seed-sized hole, the layers of this mosaic work together to reflect light off these concave mirrors onto the retina above.
"The mirror forms images on a double-layered retina, to separately image both peripheral and central fields of view," the researchers wrote.
Once the retina receives this information, the team believes the scallop’s nervous system (after all, they don’t actually have a proper brain) then processes the images from its 200 eyes into a single image. This helps the scallop perceive the world with a complex three-dimensional view of the world with millimeter precision. All those eyes also mean they can view a wider horizontal area to keep an eye out for predators.
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