How do insects see?

Hi! Future Ticia 2024 here, and I’m taking a moment to update this post on how do insects see so it’s more useful, and lets you turn this into a science lesson you can do with your kids as you study Flying Creatures. It was a fun little event, and there is much you can do with this.

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I return you to Past Ticia 2010 and how do insects see

As promised I’m telling you all about how bugs see.

Bugs have three different types of eyes (and I’m not going to tell you the scientific names, because I don’t feel like hunting down the textbook, I’m writing this as stuff prints for Sunday School tomorrow).

Learn more about insects

If you want to make this a more full unit study beyond just learning how insects see, then check out my Insect booklist for a whole slew of books you can use for this topic.

Insect sight: light sensor eyes

First, what are essentially light sensor eyes.  These allow insects to tell the difference between light and dark.  I think a cool way to demonstrate this would be to blindfold your child and have them try and find their way to a flashlight or a lamp in a dark room.  My kids freak out anytime I blindfold them right now, so we’re not going to try this idea.

Future Ticia 2024 suggests using a very thin cloth that you can vaguely see through, think one of those really old shirts you own, looking through it you can see vague shapes and impressions of light and dark. There are also see-through masks for magic tricks. I will warn you looking up “see-through mask” means there were some…. ummm… masks intended for other purposes that I very carefully did not click on. I really didn’t want to see the customer reviews of that.

Insects that see with simple eyes

The next type of eyes is simple eyes.  These are what we have.  Their straight forward simple, and very few insects have them (I keep having to delete when I type bug, because I found out this past week that a bug is a very particular type of insect, and the term is not interchangeable, and before you ask, no I don’t know what type yet).

Finally, is the compound eye, to me the best description of this is what you see when you look through a kaleidoscope (you know the cheaper ones you get that refract stuff, but don’t have the cool lights, or the quilter’s helper that multiplies your blocks).

There is no experiment related to this, because it’s the same eyesight we have.

How do insects see with compound eyes?

My original plan had been to pick up a cheap kaleidoscope and let them look through that, and see what it is like.  Then I remembered the teacher supply store I used to work at sells these bug glasses, so we trekked down to central Austin to buy some.

Future Ticia 2024 adding in, 14 more years of consumerism means that you can buy something similar for much cheaper, kaleidoscope glasses, I don’t think it would be as fun as the insect glasses, nor as accurate, but it’s more friendly to your budget. I’ll also add they hand them out at some mirror mazes to make them more difficult, and let me tell you if you have astigmatism or are prone to migraines/epilepsy from flashing lights, those are super painful to use. If you’re doing this with a co-op, here is a link for a disposable version that gets you 100 pairs for $30. But, most families will be good with the 3 pairs in the original link. Back to Past Ticia 2010.

I had great plans for these glasses.  We were going to play a game of tag, and all sorts of things.  Then we ran into problems

First, they don’t stay on too well, as you can see Superman is holding onto the glasses just to sit and eat.

Second, before we got home they had broken them in such a way they weren’t wearable.

And third, I don’t know if you know this, but there’s a reason we don’t have compound eyes.  We don’t function with them.  I tried them on and looked through them and within in a few minutes I was starting to get a headache.  It’s a very weird feeling.

Future Ticia 2024 will add now that my kids have used them as teens, it is only me who had a problem with that vision. So I really think it’s due to the reasons I mentioned up above.

So, if you want your kids to get a chance to see like a bug does, I’d recommend just getting the kaleidoscope and looking through that.  It gives the same feeling, without the extra expense of the glasses.

But, in the end mission was accomplished, the kids do know how a bug sees and can tell you all about how cool it is.  So, that’s good.  I’m saving the post about what we learned from observing our short-term pet crickets for when we’re out of town, and I won’t have something to post.

Quick side-note of a craft to make

You can also pick up this kaleidoscope craft kit to make it into a more hands-on project, but at the same time it is not how compound eyes work, it’s just a cool project. I know there is somewhere that has instruction how to make it without the kit, but I’ll also add that gathering the materials may be close to the cost of the kit.

It all depends on if you tend to keep some of those supplies on hand.

Some more great flying creatures lessons

We studied this in kindergarten, so I’m going to throw in some cool kindergarten ideas too:

• Kindergarten Curriculum Choice
• How do dinosaurs digest their food? (gizzards)
• Insect KWL Chart
• Feather Experiments
• Very Hungry Caterpillar Unit

Richard Bartz, Munich aka Makro Freak, CC BY-SA 2.5 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5, via Wikimedia Commons