How Does A Praying Mantis See in 3-D?

When hunting insects, a praying mantis depends on precision targeting. Thankfully, this insect has the ability to see in 3-D, which makes their deadly surgical strikes accurate. (They are the only insect known for being able to see in 3-D). But how do they see in this way? This is what scientists investigated, and they were able to identify nerve cells that help a praying mantis in calculating depth perception.

In the new study, neuroscientist Ronny Rosner of Newcastle University in England and colleagues used a tiny theater that played praying mantises’ favorite films — moving disks that mimic bugs. The disks appeared in three dimensions because the insects’ eyes were covered with different colored filters, creating minuscule 3-D glasses.

As a praying mantis watched the films, electrodes monitored the behavior of individual nerve cells in the optic lobe, a brain structure responsible for many aspects of vision. There, researchers found four types of nerve cells that seem to help merge the two different views from each eye into a complete 3-D picture, a skill that human vision cells use to sense depth, too.

The team stated that their research findings suggest that a praying mantis’s vision is more sophisticated than what some scientists thought.

Amazing!

(Image Credit: Newcastle Univ., U.K)