A deep-sea fish, Dolichopteryx longipes, uses mirrors to focus light on its retina. Every other sighted vertebrate (and that's most of us) known uses lenses.
Facinating! I wonder whether the mirrors work better at collecting the light by presenting a larger total surface area to reflect the light than a lens would be able to efficiently gather. I'm using the analogy to optical telescopes, where lenses work okay for smaller telescopes, but for really large telescopes, like Mt. Palomar for example, mirrors are necessary.
I was thinking it was because it's deep sea, so there's very little light there and mirrors magnify light. That's why when you go to historical places like Monticello, you see there are mirrors all over the upper railing in the room where they spent the most time. Mirrors make candles give much more light and they could stay up later.
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