MONARCH BUTTERFLY EYESIGHT

Female Monarch enjoying the nectar of a Zinnia flower. Notice the pollen on its proboscis.

---

Have you noticed how beautiful Monarch Butterfly eyes are?  To my general eyesight their eyes are black with little grooves down the length of them, but what is the reality?

Monarch Butterflies see through compound eyes made up of thousands of ommatidia.
Each ommatidium gathers light and processes visual information through its own lens and nerve system. Compound eyes give butterflies excellent perception of colour and motion in a wide range. They can see up, down, forward, backward and to the sides at the same time.
On the other hand they do not seem good at judging distance or perceiving patterns and the images are not united into one continuous picture. It is said that butterflies see the world as a series of still pictures rather than a movie. Butterflies can also perceive polarised light (i.e. light waves that move only in one direction and butterflies can sense that direction). 
REF: Monarch Watch

Butterfly eyes are composed of thousands of image forming tiny eyes called ommatidia. Each ommatidium is a sensory structure with a lens, cones and retina cells. The ommatidia are arranged in the compound eye so that each individual eye is set at a slightly different angle from the next. This arrangement allows the butterfly eye to simultaneously see in all directions at the same time with a mosaic of individual images that form a whole picture. This type of vision is known as Omni-vision.
REF: MOSI Outside

---

Click on each picture below, to see a larger view...

---