
Extreme mobility of mantis shrimp eyes - dnetesn
https://phys.org/news/2018-05-extreme-mobility-mantis-shrimp-eyes.html
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sushisource
What is it about mantis shrimp that they have this seemingly comically over-
engineered vision system? They eat small prey, so that's obviously one reason
to have decent vision, but I can't imagine why they need so developed a vision
system where other animals eating the same prey have no such need.

Weird.

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bane
It's possible that the vision system evolved long ago under radically
different circumstances and just had no imperative to get rid of it.

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bsder
Unlikely. Vision is so metabolically expensive that it disappears really
quickly once it no longer confers an advantage.

On the other side of the equation, vision is so stupidly useful that it has
evolved independently from several different systems in different organisms.

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bane
Do we know that this is true for features of vision systems in the same way it
is for the system in general?

For example, animals who end up in dark environments lose sight relatively
quickly in a few generations, but for other cases, do animals tend to lose
specific parts of their vision system - color, edge detection, etc.?

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downer68
Yes, newts and salamanders in cave systems have lost their eyes, due to
scarcity of nutrition and habitats devoid of light.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_blind_salamander](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_blind_salamander)

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joevandyk
More on mantis shrimp:
[http://theoatmeal.com/comics/mantis_shrimp](http://theoatmeal.com/comics/mantis_shrimp)

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jonathanoliver
That was the first thing I thought of too! I wonder if he'll update the comic
in light of these new findings.

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c17r
This is my goto for Mantis Shrimp information:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5FEj9U-CJM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5FEj9U-CJM)

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bwang29
This makes me think that maybe mantis shrimp relies on powerful sensor to see
the world but doesn't have a lot of good software / internal hardware to do
further processing. Human's eye sensor seems poor compare to the ones of
mantis shrimp but a lot of work is done in the post processing. It's be
difficult to clearly define if mantis shrimp can indeed see "more".

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yosito
You're right. Radiolab had a recent episode that goes into this;
[https://overcast.fm/+JaxJ5s](https://overcast.fm/+JaxJ5s)

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Zee2
If they can see the polarization of light, perhaps rolling their eyes can
change the filtering of the polarization?

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forgueam
The same thought came to my mind. When wearing my polarized sunglasses,
sometimes the screens on gas station pumps will be unreadable. However, if I
rotate my head slightly one way or the other, the polarization filter is
removed and I can read the screen clearly.

