What do dragonfly eyes look like? 

The dragonfly has a large head with three small simple eyes and two extremely large compound eyes that meet in the centre.

Compound eyes have thousands of ommatidia – tiny, independent photoreceptors that have a cornea, lens and light-sensing cells. 

Compound eyes can’t see very well, but they can see all around them and they can sense movement, especially fast movement.

The dragonfly’s compound eyes contain 22,000-23,000 ommatidia. There are about 4,500 large ommatidia, and the rest are small ommatidia. Some dragonflies have the same size ommatidia. 

The three simple eyes are called ocelli. Each of the simple eyes have a single lens. They are located at the top of the head in a triangular shape.

Photographer: Martina Nicolls

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