spent three or four weeks with rotting meat outside my apartment where i'd periodically walk out and catch the butterflies with a small fish net. >> i guess academia is not as much glory as it seems. this seems remarkable. why do we need flies at all for this -- what's the nature of the fly's eye? is it an even shape or is there something unique about it that only occurs in nature that's hard to replicate in science. once you figured it out, i would think you could manufacture these? >> the fly eye is curved on several scales. a millimeter curvature is what you see when you look at the eye with your naked eye. and under a microscope, the surface is textured with a 20