Bed Bugs – How Do They See?
Although bed bugs love feeding on human blood they do not have eyes that see like human beings. These parasitic creatures have what is called a compound eye structure. It is thought that they do not see in color, that they visualize in black and white. A bed bugs eye is made up of hundreds of eye lenses called facets that fit together in a hexagon structure. An easy way to picture what this insects eye looks like is to think of a bee honey comb in a conical shape and not flat. It is like a soccer ball, but on a smaller, more complex level. The individual facets consist of two lenses, one on the surface and one on the inside. The bed bugs dual lens eye structure allows it to see in 3-D. All of these facets fitted together construct the parasites eye. These facets are connected to tubes that focus light down a central structure called the rhabdome. The rhabdome is light sensitive and directs the information through an optic nerve to the bugs brain. Each individual facet in the bed bugs eye sends a different picture to it’s brain. When all these pictures are processed and put together a mosaic is created. This 3-D mosaic is how the bed bug can see it’s human host. It is not known if, as the bed bug moves,...
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