Attracted a rather late Red Admiral butterfly to my sugar honey sprayed camelia leaves the other day. It allowed me to get reasonably close with the MPE-65 lens. These have very hairy eyes !
Fantastic images Brian.
Do you have any of the wing patterns?
Seems like 'our' supreme macro efforts concentrate solely on the eyes of our critters and a lot of the visual beauty is lost?
But from an inquiring mind, why do they have hairy eyeballs?
Bruce
Bruce - not got any good closeups of the wing patterns on this butterfly- they are normally fairly hard to close to - but one below, - have managed it a few times with comma butterflies which are a bit easier to get close to (see below).
Not actually seen any definitive evidence on the hairy eyeballs of some butterflies and other insects but it does seem to occur mostly in insects that come into close contact with pollen and i suspect it is a method of stopping pollen sticking to the eye surface - easier to clean off if it is on some hairs.
Wow,
Those wing close-ups are insane! Kinda like fish scales and animal hairs all joined in one? Madness, but I would certainly bet there is a very valid reason for it?
BTW, the hairy eyeball theory that you have is certainly plausible. . .great idea.
Bruce
