{"id":34106,"date":"2011-04-17T15:42:59","date_gmt":"2011-04-17T15:42:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/chitons-see-with-eyes-made-of-rock-not-exactly-rocket-science\/"},"modified":"2011-04-17T15:42:59","modified_gmt":"2011-04-17T15:42:59","slug":"chitons-see-with-eyes-made-of-rock-not-exactly-rocket-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/chitons-see-with-eyes-made-of-rock-not-exactly-rocket-science.php","title":{"rendered":"Chitons see with eyes made of rock | Not Exactly Rocket Science"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/cabe5_Chiton.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4297\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/cabe5_Chiton.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"610\" height=\"486\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a>As a fish swims over the ocean floor, it&rsquo;s being watched by hundreds of rocks. The rocks are actually the eyes of a chiton, an armoured relative of snails and other molluscs. Perhaps uniquely among living animals, it sees the world through lenses of limestone, and its eyes literally erode as it gets older.<\/p><p>Chitons are protected by a shell consisting of eight plates. The plates are dotted with hundreds of small eyes called ocelli. Each one contains a layer of pigment, a retina and a lens. People have known about the ocelli for years, but no one knew what they were made from or how much the chitons could actually see with them.<\/p><p><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.biology.duke.edu\/johnsenlab\/people\/dan.html\">Daniel Speiser<\/a> from the University of California, Santa Barbara has solved the mystery by studying the charmingly named <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Acanthopleura_granulata\">West Indian fuzzy chiton<\/a>. It all started with a surprising bath. Speiser had removed the lenses from a chiton and dipped them in a mildly acidic liquid, which was meant to clean them. Instead, it quickly dissolved them!<\/p><p>The vast majority of animal lenses are made of proteins, which should be unharmed by weak acid. The chiton lenses were ...<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/cabe5_SvMpCpOr8SY\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/cabe5_nCZCdQRVYYo\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a fish swims over the ocean floor, it&rsquo;s being watched by hundreds of rocks. The rocks are actually the eyes of a chiton, an armoured relative of snails and other molluscs. Perhaps uniquely among living animals, it sees the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/chitons-see-with-eyes-made-of-rock-not-exactly-rocket-science.php\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34106"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}