I See the Sea

The lobster eye is an amazing device. Unlike the human eye, or even the cephalopod eye (which developed separately from the vertebrate eye, but which also features the single-lens model, wherein light enters through the pupil and is focused by the lens to fall on photoreceptor cells at the rear of the eye), the lobster eye has a completely unique model, and is based on reflection rather than refraction.

The basic component of the lobster eye is a perfectly square box, which tapers on four sloping sides to meet at a point, rather like a pyramid. The surfaces of the tapering walls are coated with a substance that serves the approximate function of tinfoil, sending light from the opening of the box bouncing off the sides until the rays converge at the cluster of photoreceptor cells at the point of the pyramid. Each eye contains about 13,000 discrete boxes.

Both creationists and scientists are fascinated by the eye; creationists because the perfect construction of the pyramids and mathematically exact angles required for light to converge at a precise point, indicate a higher being's hand on the exacto knife of the genesial drawing board. Scientists have drawing boards of their own, and have recently begun using the lobster eye, with its vast light-gathering potential, as a blueprint for a new class of x-ray vision space telescope, the Lobster-ISS.

The truly amazing thing, however, is not the very existence of this beautifully designed organ, but that the lobster rarely, if ever, uses it. Why do lobsters have such anatomically perfect eyes when so little light penetrates to the ocean floor?