Evolution of the Eye and the Different Parts

1294 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Essay on structure of human eye

In 1802, philosopher William Paley called the eye a miracle of "design". Your eyes are responsible for 80 percent of all of the information that your brain receives. (Schleifer, 2014) But how did our eyes form? How are we able to see what we see? What allows us to see the colors we see? The eye is made up of many different complex parts that all work together to create images our brain can understand. The eye is made up of the front parts, or parts we can see, the interior parts, or parts we can’t see, the nerves which carry signals to our brain, and glands that protect our eyes. The eyes we have today have evolved over a long period of time and undergone many different changes, according to Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins, and many other evolutionists. When all of the different parts of our eyes work together we are able to see a clear image that is produced from our brain.
How did our eyes form? In 1859, Charles Darwin wrote a book called the Origin of Species (a book that states Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection). In the book, Darwin stated that it seemed absurd to think that the eye formed by natural selection. He was baffled by the complexity of the eye and how it formed. But, Darwin still believed the eye did form by natural selection although there was no evidence to support his claim.(Lamb, 2014) Since eyes do not fossilize very well, it is hard for scientists to follow the development of the eye. In Darwin’s book, he wrote of stages that he believed the eyes might have undergone over time to evolve into the eyes we have today. Eyes range in complexity and in the type of organisms they appear in, from simple unicellular organisms with simple eyes, to multicellular organisms with extremely complex eyes. Eve...

... middle of paper ...

... moist and are in the outer corner of each eye. Blinking evenly spreads the tears produced by your tear glands over the eyes. Tears keep the eyes from drying out as well as help wash away germs, dust, and other particles that don’t belong in your eyes.
How do human eyes differ from other organisms or other primates eyes? As animals evolved overtime with more complex bodies, the eye also evolved and became more complex. There are several differences that help the human eye stand out. In other primates’ eyes, a pigment is present that covers the sclera. Humans do not posses this pigment and that is why our eyeball is white. Humans eyes are also set closer together than many other animals. This gives humans depth perception, but lessens our ability to have good peripheral vision. Humans eye are also elongated horizontally, compared to other primates eyes. (Than, 2006)

Show More
Related

  • Evolution and The Island of Doctor Moreau

    1421 Words  | 3 Pages

    Darwin did not come up with his theory out of nowhere. Like anyone else who has made discoveries, he was influenced by others. For quite a long time before Darwin, people didn't look beyond the Biblical creation story. Such things as fossils, primitive stone tools and visible layers of rock were said to have been placed on earth by God. There wasn't a great deal of work done on what we now call evolution, until the age of exploration began.

    Read More

  • Social Darwinism in American Politics

    1210 Words  | 3 Pages

    Darwin took copious notes, captured insects and animals and selected plants. These he preserved in jars and took them back to England where he thought about the implications of what he had seen. for almost three decades. What occurred to him was a simple notion: animals, plants, insects, fishes, etc., which were obviously related differed slightly and these differences seemed to be tied in with their ability to survive. Differences, which he called "adaptations," were often related to geographical factors. He also saw something similar in fossils: certainly some fish, sea shells, etc., that died and were covered up by sand, gradually turned to stone, and were caught forever in fossil form. There seemed to b...

    Read More

  • Trilobites

    852 Words  | 2 Pages

    the eyes had densely packed lenses and may have served merely as a light sensitive

    Read More

  • Characteristics of Human and Non-Human Primates

    759 Words  | 2 Pages

    What makes a human a primate? A primate is defined by its many incredible features. A primate is a mammal that has certain characteristics such as: flexible fingers and toes, opposable thumbs, flatter face than other mammals, eyes that face forward and spaced close together, large and complex cerebrum, and social animals. What makes a primate a primate is its characteristics. Some of the physical features that primates can be identified by is by their teeth, snouts, eyes, ears, arms, legs, fingers, and their toes. One of the main things that categorizes a human has a primate is selective pressure, the second main thing is having similar features and characteristics. But both humans and non-humans have differences even though they are both primates.

    Read More

  • Mathematics of Human Vision and Corrective Lenses

    1683 Words  | 4 Pages

    The four main components of the eye that are responsible for producing an image are the cornea, lens, ciliary muscles and retina. Incoming light rays first encounter the cornea. The bulging shape of the cornea causes it to refract light similar to a convex lens. Because of the great difference in optical density between the air and the corneal material and because of the shape of the cornea, most of the refraction to incoming light rays takes place here. Light rays then pass through the pupil, and then onto the lens. A small amount of additional refraction takes place here as the light rays are "fine tuned" so that they focus on the retina.

    Read More

  • Structure of the eye and ear

    952 Words  | 2 Pages

    The eye it also helps at the same time by spreading lubricates over the eyeballs.

    Read More

  • Evolution of the Human Brain

    891 Words  | 2 Pages

    The purpose of this paper to examine the evolution of the human brain that distinguishes them from other species based on the traits that humans possess: such as language, emotional complexity and consciousness. The significance of traits are due to adaptations in humans to promote the survival of our ancestors. Professor Hamilton (2012) discusses that the evolution of the human brain starts with the idea of the Triune brain, proposed by MacLean, whereby the human brain is made up of three parts: Reptilian, Paleo-mammalian, and Neo-mammalian. Animals with the neo-mammalian brain have a more complex brain compared to the other parts, since this is where the neocortex evolved. Humans essentially have this higher brain function which is responsible for our ability to think, make decisions, promote agency, and the ability to relate with each other. This concept fits into the evolutionary process since it shows how the complex the brain has become through evolutionary processes. In essence, as humans, we “have a rich, evidence-based understanding of our behavior that can lead us to plan to be ‘better’ or ‘more successful’ people” according to Professor Hamilton (2012). Thus, shows how evolution plays a significance in understanding human behavior and comparing humans with other species.

    Read More

  • Eye Evolution Essay

    2260 Words  | 5 Pages

    An inspection of the modern animal phyla will reveal that eyes are just as diverse as they are complex. Some organisms like the rag worm have pigmented cup eyes while other like he box jellyfish have two lens eyes and two pairs of pigment pit eyes. To account for the diversity in eye structure, we must first examine the eye ‘prototype’, the original structure that was acted upon by evolution. The simplest organ that can be considered an eye is composed of a single photoreceptor cell and a single pigment cell, without any lens or other refractive body (Arendt, 2003). Such organs are know as eyespots, and...

    Read More

  • The History of Hominid Evolution

    1037 Words  | 3 Pages

    Their faces also consist of big arching browridges just above their eyes (Stanford 302). Throughout the human evolution fossils have been found and each bone discovered demonstrates how the early hominids to the modern human features have changed. Each bone showed off different stories and new facts. Even the inner ear bone has changed in shape and in size throughout the early hominids. Over time the littlest things have changed but it seems like it helped surviving better, by helping to be able to be biped and tool making.

    Read More

  • Persuasive Essay On Bionic Eye

    620 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the world of bionics, the technologies such as the bionic eye sit between the realms of science fiction and reality. Bionic eyes are at this time limited by current technologies, and while they can bring a certain quality of life to people with sight impairments, the bionic eye at this point is falls way short of the organic eye. This essay will endeavour to persuade the reader that organic eyes, due to current technological limitations, are superior to bionic eyes. In order for people to benefit from bionic eyes, they need to have a functional visual pathway from the retina to the brain along the optic nerve as well as some intact retinal cells. This need for intact optical nerves \ intact retinal cells limits the potential recipients for treatment to people with retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration and other genetic eye conditions that effect around 1.5 million people worldwide.

    Read More

  • Evolutionary Developmental Biology

    2219 Words  | 5 Pages

    The biology of development promises to formulate a main contribution to these... ... middle of paper ... ...is. Moreover, the relationship between neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory and evo-devo is highly contested (Hoekstra and Coyne, 2007; Minelli, 2010). However, the understanding of evo-devo methods and how the characteristics of the morphologies of different species diverged eventually is still comparatively limited. Craig (2010) stated that this field has obviously contributed to the understanding of genes and, subsequently, the understanding morphological characteristics of evolution in intricate organisms.

    Read More

  • Cataracts

    1763 Words  | 4 Pages

    The eye normally consist of a lens that is located behind the iris, the colored

    Read More

  • Essay About Consciousness

    877 Words  | 2 Pages

    Perhaps one of the strangest mysteries of the universe is the question of how we became cognizant creatures. Being conscious is one of the bare-bone requirements of being alive, and yet, we still don't understand how it all came to be.

    Read More

  • Human Eye Essay

    1189 Words  | 3 Pages

    The incredible thing about the human eye is that it can see objects to as far as 2 miles long.That’s almost 35 football fields! Let’s consider the mechanics of the eye. The eye is a clear ball with water-like fluids in there.You have the front of the eyeball which is translucent called the cornea. It’s extremely thin and its job is to protect the eye by refracting light that comes through. The next part of the eye is the pupil, which mostly everyone knows about.It is the black portion in your eye. Did you know that it gets its color from when light entering the eye is absorbed and it doesn’t leave the eye. You may also notice that when you’re looking at the pupil, you can see a different colored circle in them. This is called the iris, and it varies among everyone. Your actual eye color is determined by a pigment in the iris.The genes from your parents set a human’s eye color. The iris’s job is to widen or close depending on how bright or dark it is. If its bright and the sun is basically beaming down on you, the iris will adjust so your pupil will get smaller to only let a certain amount of light in. If you’re in the dark, your iris adjusts so your pupil will get bigger so a greater...

    Read More

  • The Human Eye

    2031 Words  | 5 Pages

    This reflected light passes through the lens and falls on to the retina of the eye. Here, the light induces nerve impulses that travel through the optic nerve to the brain, where it makes an image of the object, and then that image is passed on to muscles and glands.The eye is well protected. It lies within a bony socket of the skull. The eyelids guard it in front. They blink an average of once every six seconds. This washes the eye with the salty secretion from the tear, or lachrymal, glands.

    Read More

More about Evolution of the Eye and the Different Parts

Open Document