Michael Henderson suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Click here for exclusive articles, offers, tasting notes and discussion

The Eye: A Natural History

Broadening the vision

Simon Ings
Bloomsbury, 322pp, £17.99,

Marcus Berkmann

Wednesday, 28th March 2007

Human beings, it transpires, have much better eyesight than we give ourselves credit for. We may lack ‘certain exotic adaptations that can aid nocturnal vision, [but] we can still detect light that is a billionth the strength of daylight.’ In good conditions this means we can see the flame of a single candle 17 miles away. Very few species can do better. (It’s our relatively poor hearing and sense of smell that let us down.)

Eyes have developed and adapted in countless different and strange ways. Ings’s favourite is the surface-feeding fish anableps anableps, which lives in Central and South America and has four eyes, two for above the waterline, two for below. He gives lovely descriptions of the ways insects see: why bees fly straight into walls painted a single colour, and why wasps won’t sting you if you keep perfectly still. How long, I wondered, before Ings mentioned the giant squid? Only 23 pages, as it happens, although it turns out that that vast staring ghoulish eye is quite dissimilar to the human eye. Despite their superb visual acuity, kestrels find it hard to spot voles, their favourite food. But they can see the long trails of urine that voles leave and which reflect ultraviolet light. As Ings puts it, all they have to do is ‘follow the arrows’. Many readers will find themselves doing something similar as they rip happily through this richly enjoyable book.