The eyes of many animals, birds and insects can perform in remarkable ways. One of the most outstanding animals with unusual eyes is the horny-toed lizard, which makes its home in the deserts of Arizona. It is an amazing creature not seen by many people. This is an ugly little fellow with a wrinkly brownish-tan body, capped with a pair of reddish ears on top of its horny, grim-faced head. It also has two big areas of red flesh around its dark eyes.
On occasions this little fellow curls up into a wrinkly ball, its body resting on legs pulled under it. It confronts an enemy by sitting upright, and with its head raised it will suddenly shoot out a series of dark red globs of blood over its head in such an amazing manner that its attacker is frightened away. The bloody shots may reach up six feet or more and may have a bad smell that makes the enemy leave it alone.
Another interesting example is the strange-looking jumping spider which has two big black eyes above its jaws, while slightly higher and a short distance away are two more, smaller, dark-colored eyes. It appears that the big eyes look ahead and the small ones see only what is behind.
There is a small fish called anableps that spends much time at the water’s surface. The upper half of its unusual eyes sees things in every direction above the surface, while at the same time the lower half sees only things below the surface. Thus, while resting right at the surface, it can keep fully alert to everything in front, behind, above, and below it.
The eyespot grasshopper has been provided with light green round spots on the back of its dark brown body that look like huge eyes. These keep enemies away that otherwise would attack it. Something similar takes place with the silk moth, colored mostly in bright red. When a bird sneaks up from behind, it is suddenly frightened away when the moth, sensing its approach, opens its wings and two snake-like “eyes” are exposed.
The pretty yellow butterfly fish is often the target of larger fish. On swimming closer, the larger fish discover two big white-rimmed coal-black “eyes” with a partly open mouth below them and turn away in fright. But what is actually there are markings that fooled them. The Creator provided these to preserve this pretty little fish from hungry enemies. The actual eyes on the front of the fish are concealed by wide black stripes.
These are just a few of the many wonders of God’s creation. Perhaps in the delights and wonders of heaven, we who know the Lord Jesus as our Saviour will hear from His lips about many other created wonders. Will you be there?
ML-11/28/1993