Praying mantises are the only invertebrates known to possess 3-D vision, prompting researchers to analyze how their three dimension viewing could help us understand how this vision works through miniature 3-D glasses, scientists at Newcastle University press release reported.
The research team, funded by a £1M Research Leadership Award by the Leverhulme Trust to characterize the mechanisms of 3D vision in mantises and how these mechanisms can be applied in science and industry, is being led by Dr. Jenny Read from the Institute of Neuroscience at Newcastle University.
The world's tiniest pair of 3-D glasses will be attached to the mantises with beeswax.
After the glasses are placed on them, the insects will be situated in front a monitor that displays computer-generated 3-D images in a method similar to how 3-D movies in theaters utilize displaced imagery to fool the human brain into thinking the image has depth, PBS reported.
"Despite their minute brains, mantises are sophisticated visual hunters which can capture prey with terrifying efficiency. We can learn a lot by studying how they perceive the world," Read said.
By analyzing the mantis' reactions to the images, the study may determine if mantises see moving objects standing out depth-wise in the same way that humans do, according to PBS.
The study might particularly help researchers figure out new ways to implement 3-D into future technology and discover how three-dimensional vision has evolved.
"If we find that the way mantises process 3-D vision is very different to the way humans do it," said Dr. Vivek Nityananda, a research associate at Newcastle University, "then that could open up all kinds of possibilities to create much simpler algorithms for programming 3D vision into robots."
Following Samuel Rossel's discovery in 1983 that praying mantises have 3D vision, this will be the first major research project to be investigating these mechanisms.
