Almost all of our cameras form images by using a single lens to focus light onto a light-sensitive sheet. That’s how our own eyes actually work, but there are many other ways of seeing the world. Arthropods—insects, spiders and their kin—have compound eyes, which consist of hundreds or thousands of individual units or ommatidia. Each one has its own lens and light detectors. They form separate images, which are then united in the brain. And since arthropods greatly outnumber all other animals, the vast majority of eyes are compound ones.

Now, John Rogers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has developed a camera that mimics compound eyes. It might not have the same resolution as a state-of-the-art digital camera,