Engineering for a clear image: a comparative focus on accommodation.

Abstract

The eye requires the ability to focus images near and far and throughout evolution numerous mechanisms have developed to allow this accommodation. From primitive organisms which use a small pupil to effect pinhole camera optics without a lens through more complex eyes with a lens that is moved antero-posteriorly along the visual axis or the shape of which is changed, the eye has engineered numerous accommodative mechanisms. Human inventors have developed cameras with remarkable accommodative abilities but none match the remarkable focussing abilities of the four-eyed fish Anableps or the cormorant which similarly manages to focus above and below water, to give just two examples from the animal kingdom, perfectly adapted to their environments and behaviours.