arthopods in mythology and the bible

[whoppers]

Originally Posted by Meester-Chung

the bible is written by people hallucinating caused by the ingestion of entheogens

The Book of Revelation - yes, you're probably right.
The rest of the Bible - not so much.

[granpa]

A Phar-old Insect Quiz - Fun Facts, Questions, Answers, Information

[Eresh]

OP, I'm not sure what your point is. Yes, the world is riddled with pesky insects and has been for a very long time. It's no great surprise that people wrote about them just as they still do. These days, I think the Syfy types of movies have the leg up on scary insect stories.

[granpa]

A typical insect head possesses a
pair of antennae; eyes; mandibles, labrum, maxillae and labium
(the latter four forming the cluster of "mouth parts", no. 32. in the diagram).

Lying above the oesophagus is the
brain or supraesophageal ganglion, divided into three pairs of ganglia:
the protocerebrum, deutocerebrum and tritocerebrum from front to back (collectively no. 5 in the diagram).

Nerves from the
protocerebrum lead to the large compound eyes; (hence is sensory and probably equivalent to our midbrain)

deuterocerebrum to the antennae; (our forebrain is also associated with our sense of smell)

tritocerebrum to the labrum and stomatogastric nervous system.
Circum-oesophageal connectives lead from the
tritocerebrum around the gut to connect the brain to the ventral ganglionated nerve cord: (the output of teh brain hence probably equivalent to our cerebellum)

nerves from the first three pairs of ganglia lead to the mandibles, maxillae and labium, respectively



teh protocerebrum is huge in bees. (something like 1,000,000 neurons)
so big that I have trouble believing that its all from one ganglion associated with a single segment


Two very prominent optical lobes are present, and they are responsible for processing the inputs from the eyes. They are attached to the PC, but they’re not part of it.





I think the reason the protocerebrum (which I think is analogous to our midbrain) is so large is because the animal eventually evolved multiple eyes (just like spiders have 8 eyes. Also just like millipedes have multiple legs) and the ganglia associated with them fused to form the so-called protocerebrum.

I believe that each lens of a compound eye was originally an entire eye with its own ganglia.

[granpa]

Eye of Ra - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The yellow or red disk-like sun emblem in Egyptian art represents the Eye of Ra. Because of the great importance of the sun in Egyptian religion, this emblem is among the most common religious symbols in all of Egyptian art.[2] Although Egyptologists usually call this emblem the "sun disk", its convex shape in Egyptian relief sculpture suggests that the Egyptians may have envisioned it as a sphere.[3] The emblem often appears atop the heads of solar-associated deities, including Ra himself, to indicate their links with the sun. The disk could even be regarded as Ra's physical form.[2] At other times, the sun god, in various forms, is depicted inside the disk shape as if enclosed within it.[4] The Egyptians often described the sun's movement across the sky as the movement of a barque carrying Ra and his entourage of other gods, and the sun disk can either be equated with this solar barque or depicted containing the barque inside it.[3] The disk is often called Ra's "daughter" in Egyptian texts.[1]
As the sun, the Eye of Ra is a source of heat and light, and it is associated with fire and flames. It is also equated with the red light that appears before sunrise, and with the morning star that precedes and signals the sun's arrival