Ask Ms. Jessica Issue 22 – 20/20/20/20/20 Vision (Patreon)

(The content for Ask Ms. Jessica comes from real questions from real people sent to AskMsJessica@gmail.com)

Ms. Jessica,

I see girls with four or more eyes all the time. I have to wonder, how does multi-eye vision work?

Now this is something I can answer from personal experience. 

Let me ask you something. How do your eyes work? For most humans they work like this. Each eye receives photons that excite photoactivator cells on your retina. These cells send electric signals to your brain, forming two images of the world. Your brain then processes these images and merges them into one, so as long as you aren’t thinking about it you just have one long field of vision. If you are thinking about it, however, you start seeing your nose and you go all cross-eyed and things get really weird.

Mutants with multi-eyes do the same thing, just on a grander scale. I, for example, receive five images from my eyes, but my brain just merges them into one. As long as I don’t think of the space between my eyes they all work in concert otherwise… OOP there I go, getting all goofy and cross-eyed again.

Of course, there is a reason humans have two eyes. An extra eye gives them extra information about the world. For example, it allows them to calculate depth instinctively by comparing tiny differences in each eye’s picture. 

With more than two eyes, this effect is just more pronounced. Multi-eyed mutants can see father and have a much expanded field of view, able to see things at the sides and even in back of their head, depending on their eye position. The more eyes, the greater the detail, the wider the field of vision, and the further away they can see.

Some mutants have eyes on stalks, tentacles, or their limbs. Sometimes these mutants process sight a bit differently. If the brain cannot effectively merge the two pictures, then they simply “see” from two different locations. Imagine it something like driving a car. You have the view in front, but you also have different views in your mirrors.

But have enough eyes and your brain eventually will be able to merge them into one picture no matter how far apart they are. For example, if you had multiple eyes on tentacles, you could see 360 degrees around you for miles! Better not challenge a mutant like that to a game of hide-and-seek!

Oh, and one more thing I can say from personal experience? Multi-eyed glasses are very, very, expensive. It’s a good thing that multi-eyed mutants tend to have good vision!

Dr. Jessica Park

AskMsJessica@gmail.com