I'm surprised they didn't mention jumping spiders (Salticidae), which are notable because they are inverts, have the ability to see an unusual number of colors, and unlike the mantis shrimp can be trained on them. Also another advantage is they can be rewarded with sugar water. Evolutionarily, their eyesight is a marvel. No other spiders really have anything approaching it.
I have a couple as pets (https://medium.com/@melissamcewen/how-i-ended-up-with-pet-ju...) and sometimes have managed to get them interested in videos of other bugs but I'd like to develop something geared just towards them. There are a couple of things like this used in the lab, but nothing open sourced that I know of.
Very nice write-up. You have inspired me to look into building a terrarium and keeping some spiders. I had a Green Lynx Hunter outside my backdoor for awhile and he was so nice to watch.
Also, I hate to be "that guy" but I found a few grammatical errors towards the end of your post. The first being with "No, not poisonous, but all spiders produced venom..."(produced > produce) and "Their are no jumping spiders that have venom"(Their > There). /grammar policing over :P Otherwise awesome article, thanks for the inspiration!
Interesting, IIRC mantis shrimp are considered one of the more intelligent forms of arthropod. Perhaps it's just not the correct sensory system to communicate with them through. Evolution is certainly capable of honing an organ system's acuity independently from the organism's brain/CNS.
On a related note, it's amazing how many times eyes have seemed to independently evolve. And once they do occur in a species, it takes a lot of evolutionary pressure to get rid of them. Troglobites or stygobites generally still have atrophied vestigial eyes, despite being adapted to a purely subterranean environment. It would seem with the relatively stable ecosystem a cave would provide, stabilizing selection over a long while would select for no eyes. However vestigial eyes are still common, which I suspect implies the metabolic cost to fitness ratio of eyes must be strongly in favor of having eyes, even if barely functional.
I love jumping spiders. I sometimes feed them little droplets of honey from a toothpick (I leave it along their path) and they sometimes spend a few minutes drinking from it.
I also play with them and get them to chase a laser pointer, being careful to keep it away from their eyes.
I just this morning on the train finished the rather enjoyable Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, which features a planet of sentient Portia Labiatas. Then came your comment and your lovely Medium article, which made me realize that the author had not overstated the characteristics of these animals at all. You may enjoy the book if you like sci-fi.
Keep in mind that they see a different spectrum. Any video you want to show them may need to be projected with special software or hardware to make those images look like bugs.
(It's not necessarily true, but worth thinking about.)
It turns out our eyes vibrate a bit(~80HZ) to get a higher information density by injecting noise, increasing sampling above the discrete quantization[1]. His theory is that 48FPS ends up being really close to the nyquist limit and wreaks all sorts of havok on how we process the film.
I've always wondered what having eyes in the back (or side) of your head would be like. Two eyes in the front is kind of like a cockpit, you see forward and have to turn. Would having an eye in the back of your head be... Behind you? Would you be aware of the blind spots around the side of your head?
We are very ingrained in having forward facing sight, I think the mere idea of having eyes in a different position is pretty incomprehensible to us
Would probably depend on what kind of eyes and how they integrated into our overall visual perception. We might only subconsciously recognize motion behind us. See, e.g., http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/health/23blin.html
What we _think_ we see and what we're actually seeing seems to be quite different. We both see more and see less than we believe. I imagine more eyes might significantly increase that complexity and nuance.
Richard Dawkins has talked about this fascinating subject several times in interviews (and in his books). It is a beautiful demonstration of how complexity and seemingly magical things can emerge from small changes over large periods of time.
e.g:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzERmg4PU3c
[+] [-] mamoswined|8 years ago|reply
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/05/150518-jumping-s...
I have a couple as pets (https://medium.com/@melissamcewen/how-i-ended-up-with-pet-ju...) and sometimes have managed to get them interested in videos of other bugs but I'd like to develop something geared just towards them. There are a couple of things like this used in the lab, but nothing open sourced that I know of.
[+] [-] rhcom2|8 years ago|reply
Have you been able to breed them?
[+] [-] julianh95|8 years ago|reply
Also, I hate to be "that guy" but I found a few grammatical errors towards the end of your post. The first being with "No, not poisonous, but all spiders produced venom..."(produced > produce) and "Their are no jumping spiders that have venom"(Their > There). /grammar policing over :P Otherwise awesome article, thanks for the inspiration!
[+] [-] rectangletangle|8 years ago|reply
Interesting, IIRC mantis shrimp are considered one of the more intelligent forms of arthropod. Perhaps it's just not the correct sensory system to communicate with them through. Evolution is certainly capable of honing an organ system's acuity independently from the organism's brain/CNS.
On a related note, it's amazing how many times eyes have seemed to independently evolve. And once they do occur in a species, it takes a lot of evolutionary pressure to get rid of them. Troglobites or stygobites generally still have atrophied vestigial eyes, despite being adapted to a purely subterranean environment. It would seem with the relatively stable ecosystem a cave would provide, stabilizing selection over a long while would select for no eyes. However vestigial eyes are still common, which I suspect implies the metabolic cost to fitness ratio of eyes must be strongly in favor of having eyes, even if barely functional.
[+] [-] gerbilly|8 years ago|reply
I also play with them and get them to chase a laser pointer, being careful to keep it away from their eyes.
[+] [-] ravenstine|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scrumper|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sillysaurus3|8 years ago|reply
(It's not necessarily true, but worth thinking about.)
[+] [-] moonwalkr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vvanders|8 years ago|reply
It turns out our eyes vibrate a bit(~80HZ) to get a higher information density by injecting noise, increasing sampling above the discrete quantization[1]. His theory is that 48FPS ends up being really close to the nyquist limit and wreaks all sorts of havok on how we process the film.
[1] https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/69748/using-...
[+] [-] euyyn|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orf|8 years ago|reply
We are very ingrained in having forward facing sight, I think the mere idea of having eyes in a different position is pretty incomprehensible to us
[+] [-] conistonwater|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wahern|8 years ago|reply
What we _think_ we see and what we're actually seeing seems to be quite different. We both see more and see less than we believe. I imagine more eyes might significantly increase that complexity and nuance.
[+] [-] bharath28|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ravenstine|8 years ago|reply
It's pretty cool seeing a much younger energetic Richard Dawkins talk about how the eye evolved multiple times.
[+] [-] m3kw9|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] once-in-a-while|8 years ago|reply
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