Content:
- » Eyes Made of Rock Really Can See, Study Says (National Geographic)
- » Chitons see with eyes made of rock (Discover Magazine)
- » Mollusks watch with eyes of rock (CNN.com)
- » This mollusk's (rock) eyes are watching you (msnbc.com)
- » 'Rock Eyes' Help Mollusk See Above Water (ScienceNOW)
A simple mollusk may have evolved enough vision to spot potential predators, according to Daniel Speiser, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Ecology Evolution and Marine Biology at UC Santa Barbara. The three-inch-long mollusks, called chitons, have hundreds of eye-like structures with lenses made of aragonite, a type of rock. The finding is published in Current Biology. It’s the first time scientists have found an animal that makes eye lenses from aragonite and not the rock’s close cousin, calcite. Testing of the animals showed that they respond to objects and not just changes in light, leading the research team to suggest that they use their eyes to avoid predators. Speiser's research of their vision was performed during his graduate studies at Duke University. READ MORE (UCSB Featured News)
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