Un-Bee-lievable Vision | The Institute for Creation Research

 
Un-Bee-lievable Vision

BeeNext to the fruit fly, the most popular insect (arthropod) of the creation scientist could very well be the common honey bee. Much has been written and filmed of this insect's incredible ability to make perfectly-formed combs containing hexagonal cells for maximum utilization of space and heat transfer. The bee's ability to convey the location of a food source to fellow workers via a sophisticated "dance" is legendary.

Twenty-first century research has now revealed that bee vision is more complex than anyone thought. According to science, arthropods have always been complex—and they have always been arthropods. One of the first arthropods found in the fossil record is the amazing trilobite, common in Cambrian and Ordovician sediments. Many of these creatures are so well preserved that a detailed analysis of their eyes has been possible:

The elegant physical design of trilobite eyes employ Fermat's principle, Abbe's sine law, Snell's laws of refraction, and compensates for the optics of birefringent crystals. Thus, trilobites could see an undistorted image under water. Imagine being able to see with undistorted vision in all directions, being able to determine distance in part of that range, while, at the same time, having the optimum sensor for motion detection.1

So, from the beginning, arthropod vision has been extremely complicated, a fact not clarified by Darwinism. Indeed, even explaining how the arthropod head supposedly evolved is an "acrimonious field."2

The composition of the arthropod head is one of the bitterest and longest-running problems in animal evolution. Unresolved after more than a century of debate, this sorry tale is (in)famously known as the "endless dispute."3

The arthropod head never evolved in the first place—it was created.

The brain of the bee is composed of a mere one million neurons (nerve cells), 0.01% of the neurons of a three-pound human brain. Using this tiny bee brain and associated vision, bees have been able to solve complicated color puzzles4 and even recognize human faces.5 They do this by using their 6,300 ommatidia that comprise the eye. Bees have also been created with the ability to distinguish up to 300 separate flashes of light per second, an attribute they use as they rapidly fly over the changing landscape.

The next time a busy bee buzzes by you on its way to a field, remember that it is designed to do and find things that our most sophisticated machines and computers cannot do, using vision and a brain that flies in the face (so to speak) of undirected evolution.

  1. Austin, S., Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe, ICR, 1994, p. 145.
  2. Budd, Graham E., Telford, Maximilian J., "Evolution: Along came a sea spider," Nature, vol. 437, Oct. 20, 2005, p.1099.
  3. Ibid.
  4. Astrobiology Magazine, Nov. 6, 2005. http://www.astrobio.net/news/.
  5. Unger, K., ScienceNOW Daily News, Dec. 2, 2005, citing Journal of Experimental Biology.

Cite this article: Frank Sherwin, D.Sc. (Hon.). 2006. Un-Bee-lievable Vision. Acts & Facts. 35 (2).

The Latest
NEWS
Surprisingly Thicker Whopper Sand Best Explained by the Flood’s...
Recently, an update on the Whopper Sand in the Gulf of America (Mexico) was published in the oil field trade magazine, AAPG Explorer.1 New...

NEWS
Stolen Chloroplasts Steal the Show
Amazing tiny chloroplasts found within equally incredible plant cells continue to reveal the detailed workmanship of the Creator who created plants...

NEWS
May 2026 Wallpaper
"that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God."  (Colossians...

NEWS
Reptile Evolution Ideas Are Challenged—Again
A small fossil reptile with strange and intricate skin outgrowths has been discovered that is forcing evolutionists to once again reexamine their understanding...

ACTS & FACTS
Creation Kids: Stegosaurus
Hi, kids! We created a special Acts & Facts just for you! Have fun doing the activities while learning about the wonderful world God...

ACTS & FACTS
Adaptive Trait Variation Conferred by Engineered Genetic Diversity
Global environments are highly diverse and dynamic, offering many changes and adaptive challenges to creatures. However, DNA sequence variability engineered...

ACTS & FACTS
Canyonlands National Park: A Bird's-Eye View
Certain overlooks at Canyonlands National Park in eastern Utah make you wish you could soar overhead to see and explore more crannies and canyons. Visitors...

ACTS & FACTS
Criticizing a Perfectly Engineered Eye: Evolutionists Humiliate...
Updated and modified from Guliuzza, R. J. 2016. Major Evolutionary Blunders: Evolutionists Can’t See Eye Design. Acts & Facts. 45 (10): 16–18. Robert...

ACTS & FACTS
Casting Out Doubts: The Fruits of ICR Research
Do you remember the first time that you read about Uzzah and the Ark of the Covenant (2 Samuel 6)? I read it as a young person and remember feeling...

ACTS & FACTS
Seeing Eye-to-Eye
Like all biological structures, explaining the vertebrate eye—or any eye for that matter—is a challenge to neo-Darwinism (modern synthesis)....