A bristle worm with eyes as sharp as those of mammals may shed light on UV, visual processing techniques.
Why does a creature that hunts at night need eyes that weigh about twenty times its head?Anders Garmbristle worms, also known as polychaetes, live on the Italian island of Ponza, just west of Naples. Although the size of their eyes alone is noteworthy, their proportion to the rest of the creature’s body is what captures one’s attention.eyes look like two giant, shiny red balloons that have been strapped to a thin worm’s body.
Researchers found that the worm’s visual capacity is both excellent and advanced. They demonstrated that the worm can see small objects and track their movements. This visual acuity from such a tiny, simple creature is unusual because capabilities like that are usually reserved for more advanced creatures, like vertebrates, arthropods, and cephalopods.
“This is the first time that such an advanced and detailed view has been demonstrated beyond these groups,” says Garm. He adds that the worm’s eyesight is equivalent to that of mice or rats. The researchers are still unsure of why the nocturnal creatures have such acute eyesight.“What they are using the eyes for is right now the one-million-dollar question,” says Garm. He has two hypotheses — both involving the worm’s ability to see UV light.
How exactly the creature can do either or both of those functions — as well as see as strongly as it does — triggers another question in Garm’s wheelhouse: how can a creature with such a simple nervous system perform such complex visual-processing tasks? He suspects thatlike other creatures with limited brain power, uses a filtering technique so that only information essential to the animal’s behavior gets through.eyes extract.
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