As Marie posted recently, the roof farm has been under assault by a battalion of enormous tobacco hornworms. They are green, somewhat pretty and they devour our tomato plants at a record speed. Check out her post for great pictures of the bandits in action.

So before waging a final battle against the invader, I got my macro gear out and despite an annoying afternoon breeze, got a few shots of the poor buggers. Their markings are simply incredible, so I focused on them – pardon the pun.

Even after reading that these are the conventional “eye spots”, Mother Nature’s classic way of fooling predators, I still find it hard to believe that they aren’t real eyes. Look at the details! Complete with a pupil and actual ridges!

For reference, each eye spot is smaller than a millimeter in size. Granted, at that level of magnification it all becomes some kind of voyeurism and the quest for beauty turns into scientific curiosity… You can see what they look like whole in the VMP Macro gallery.