Today, we talked about predators of insects. After the kids listed all the insect eaters that they could think of, we took a walk. Right out the door, we watched a downy woodpecker foraging for insects on a dead branch. We heard lots of insect-eating birds like scarlet tanagers and veerys. We stopped at the bird blind to watch birds and chipmunks (eating seeds). Inside the blind, we found a red bat snoozing on a rafter. Here is an insect-eating damselfly that we found on our walk. (Can you find the other insect in this photo?)
This morning, we also spent time talking about compound insect eyes and vision. Humans can actually see each ommatidium in insects, with a little magnification. (The ommatidium is basically the visual gathering component of an insect eye.) We see them easily, because they are much larger in insects, than the photoreceptors found in mammals and other vertebrates. Because of the larger size, there are less per square millimeter. Hence the image an insect sees is likely of lower resolution.
This is a complex concept for adults to understand, so I wondered if the kids would get it. At the end of the morning, I asked them to draw an object as they see it, and then as they imagined an insect might see it. Some kids drew multiple images of an object. Science fiction movies often portray "bug vision" in this way; and the word "compound eye" lends acceptance to this thinking. But about half the kids drew their bug's eye view fuzzy, and a little outside of the lines. Our photographer, Carole Mebus, worked up this great rendition on the computer. Same photo; she just pixalated the one on the right. Click on the photo to enlarge it, and then move away and toward your monitor to see how the clarity changes. (Photos by Carole Mebus.)
