Mantis shrimp eyes

https://ryanblakeley.net/p/mantis-shrimp-eyes

by rojobuffalo • 3 years ago

90 20 3 years ago

ryanblakeley.net

carlob• 3 years ago

Delicious too

vmoore• 3 years ago

Obligatory Oatmeal comic about the Mantis Shrimp:

https://theoatmeal.com/comics/mantis_shrimp

tootie• 3 years ago

Also https://radiolab.org/episodes/211119-colors

Also of interest, mantis shrimp are edible and quite delicious.

ilovecurl• 3 years ago

Obligatory Ze Frank vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5FEj9U-CJM

The Oatmeal claims that, "the mantis shrimp sees a thermonuclear bomb of light and beauty." This piece contradicts that claim:

"Mantis shrimp have twelve photoreceptor classes. Humans have three. We derive a spectrum of colors through comparisons between our three classes; this is called the opponent process or opponency. Mantis shrimp do not do this. They collapse the spectrum into just twelve colors."

e402• 3 years ago

I’d forgotten about Ze. Wow, what a wild ride his 365 day vlogging experiment was. It was the first and most precious thing I did everyday for almost a year.

rojobuffalo2• 3 years ago

Ya, that's a lovely comic, but it appears to be a misconception. That comic is actually specifically called out in the book on page 107.

It's more like a 12 color lookup table.

Every kind of red stimulates the bottom receptor of row 3. All shades of violet stimulate the top receptor on row 1

That's based on an experiment where they were trained to attack colored lights for a reward.

The comic also says they have 16 color receptors, but the other 4 (2 in the midband and 2 in the hemispheres), as far as anyone knows, aren't involved in color vision.

mattkrause• 3 years ago

They actually do some comparison between colors, but it's implemented in a weird, alien way.

Instead of co-located and connected cones for different colors, they drag their eyes across a scene, so the comparison can happen across time instead, like a push broom sensor.

tpmx• 3 years ago

Finally something we're better at!

swyx3• 3 years ago

Polarized light usually oscillates in a fixed plane, but that plane can sometimes rotate, so light travels along a twisting helix.

wait what? they can bend light? make it not travel in a straight line? color me skeptical

Sniffnoy• 3 years ago

The text here would appear to be confusing about what circular polarization means. Circular (or more generally, elliptical) polarization doesn't mean the light doesn't travel in a straight line.

Rather it means that the oscillations in the electrical (or equivalently, magnetic) field that the light consists of rotate around the axis that is the light's direction of travel, rather than staying in one fixed plane. The direction of travel stays constant though.

You might want to see the Wikipedia articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_polarization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptical_polarization

One way to think about this is to pick x and y directions perpendicular to the light's path of travel, and break down the light's oscillations into x and y components. Linear polarization occurs when these components are in phase with each other, and elliptical polarization occurs when they're not. When they're perfectly one quarter turn out of phase, you get circular polarization.

swyx3• 3 years ago

ahh this makes sense. i was thinking of light as a stream of particles but this is about light-as-a-wave

cultofmetatron• 3 years ago

its easy to make light follow a bend. thats how fiber optic cables work

swyx3• 3 years ago

except theres nothing to bounce off of

fnordpiglet• 3 years ago

I for one welcome our new mantis shrimp overlords.

richardfey• 3 years ago

There was in a fact a study about how humans can also detect circularly polarized light:

https://www.nature.com/articles/166958b0

Mantis shrimp eyes

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