bug of the day on Flickr.

I keep waiting for “bug season” to start, so I can get you all some fresh insect shots, but, alas, it did not get much higher than 30’F today. I think I’ll try to compensate with some super macro shots of butterfly wings. Here’s a magnificent eye spot from the wing of an owl butterfly.

You know what I love about this? The way the evolved pattern of scales perfectly imitates an actual eye’s three-dimensional shape. Look at the pattern of yellow scales, with the brown shadow on the lower-right side, and the bright highlight of white scales on the upper part of the pupil’s black scales. That gives you the eyeball’s curved surface. And surrounding the eye itself, the dark shading above and to the left, and the brighter shading below and to the right, with the part below bulging into the circle of the eye, creates the appearance of a socket.

That’s an artist at work, producing a convincing illusion of three dimensions with pigments applied to a two-dimensional surface. Except the artist isn’t a creationist’s Artist. It’s evolution and natural selection. The startle effect of a butterfly suddenly turning into an owl’s face stops a predator for a crucial second, allowing the possessor of those spots to live to pass on its genes. And the gentle gradient of “better illusion = greater survival benefit” operates across millions of generations, until you get this.