It worked! With the glasses on, the mantises would go for bugs they were shown in 3D.
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3D vision in praying mantises was first shown in 1983 by Samual Rossel, from the Department of Zoology at the University of Zürich, who wrote about his work in the journal Nature.
The results “definitively demonstrate stereopsis in mantises” according to the paper, entitled “Insect stereopsis demonstrated using a 3D insect cinema”. But when the bugs were shown in 3D, apparently floating in front of the screen, the mantises struck out at them. She added that, “better understanding of their simpler processing systems helps us understand how 3D vision evolved, and could lead to possible new algorithms for 3D depth perception in computers”.
Next researchers plan to use their findings to further explore depth perception in insects, which will help them better understand how human vision evolved and develop new ways of adding 3D technology to computers and robots.
To conduct the study, researchers constructed a specially-designed “insect cinema”, complete with itty-bitty 3D glasses, attached with beeswax.
3-D glasses placed on a praying mantis helped the Newcastle University team to confirm that the insects do utilize 3-D vision to hunt their prey.
While it’s always been known that praying mantises are visual hunters with excellent eyesight, our understanding of how they perceive the world has been limited – until now. This method involves use of circular polarization to separate two eyes’ images.
The system didn’t work, and the researchers found the insects were too close to the screen for the glasses to properly separate the images. But when the scientists played video in 3-D, the mantises attacked. They also used an LED monitor with unusually narrow output in the green and blue wavelength.
But scientists at Newcastle University have discovered, with their novel experiment, that Mantises also have this ability.
Old-fashioned 3D glasses designed for people rely on red and blue lenses, but because red light is poorly visible to mantises, researchers used blue and green lenses, Ghaith Tarawneh, a research associate on the Newcastle team, explains in an interview.
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A team from Newcastle University in the United Kingdom wanted to improve upon those results.
