Copying Fruit Fly Eye Jitters

When the results of a research project is announced, do you ever wonder why they did it in the first place? Some things seem obvious, but others...not so much. Scientists took a notion to study the retinas of fruit flies.

Since the eyes of insects do not move, fruit flies can continually track motion because their retinas have fast jitters. Humans also track moving objects, so homage was paid to the Bearded Buddha by invoking the secular miracle of convergent evolution.

Fruit fly liking a coffee fruit, USDA-ARS / Scott Bauer (Usage does not imply endorsement of site contents)

Tiny things, tiny brains, short lives (probably due to global warming), but with so few photoreceptors, they see rather well. While I still wonder why they bothered with this research, there is a practical benefit in biomimetics. That is, copying the movements of their retinas to help the resolution of cameras. Of course, engineers will not give credit to the Master Engineer and evidence is actually guesswork. Hail Darwin! Blessed be! How foolish.

Researchers working with fruit flies–the ubiquitous lab animal–have discovered the flies are able to undergo an amazing ocular process called microsaccades (involuntary microscopic jittering of their eyes).

This means that as one constantly stares at an object, it won’t fade (in the same way the olfactory nerves in our nose may be overcome or ‘go blind’ after time with a constant odor). This is because your eyes undergo these subtle movements, giving “just enough variety in the light patterns on your eyes to prevent your visual neurons from completely adapting to what they're looking at.”

The rest of the article is found at "Fruit Fly Jitters." Also of interest is "Elegant Fruit Fly Sensory Design."I still say that under magnification, they look like bees.