ARTHROPOD VISION

TAVISHI

I love bugs. In fact, I have 2 pet praying mantids (an L3 orchid and an L4 ghost), a big tub of isopods, and a beetle. I've always marveled at my praying mantids' abilities to catch their prey; it's truly fascinating. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be a bug. I bet it'd be cool as heck. Praying mantises are the only known invertebrates capable of 3d vision. Arthropods usually have one of two types of eyes: compound eyes and median ocelli, which are simple rather than compound eyes. Simple larvae are frequently incapable of complex vision, as it's not really necessary. Rather, these larvae have stemmata.

Compound eyes are found in most invertebrates, excluding chelicerates (horseshoe crabs, arachnids, etc.) Compound eyes, in comparison to ocelli, form images and are much more sensitive. However, compound eyes don't produce images with lots of resolution. Rather, organisms with compound eyes have excellent stimulus response time.

Compound eyes are formed from a lot of tiny little "eyes", or ommatidia. Each ommatidia has its own photoreceptors, cornea, and lens. Apposition compound eyes form multiple inverted images, whereas superposition eyes form one single image. Praying mantises have compound eyes specifically suited for their predation, helping them quickly notice movement of prey. Their vision has better depth perception than most insects, with a concentrated fovea. This fovea resolves the issue of poor compound eye resolution. (See what I did there?) Praying mantises also have a really cool thing called a pseudopupil: it looks like a pupil, isn't really. It appears to move with the animal- however, this only occurs because the ommatidia directly in front of the eye absorb light fully, creating that black spot.

This is my praying mantis, Mariner! She's an L4 ghost mantis. I also have an L3 orchid mantis named Boimler. They're named after two of my favorite characters from Star Trek: Lower Decks.