Have you read about sophisticated hunter insects called praying mantis in textbooks? Now, see them hunting with the world's tiniest 3D glasses.
In a bid to see if the insects can be tricked by 3D images the way humans are, a team from Newcastle University led by vision scientist Jenny Read outfitted praying mantises with a little pair of 3D glasses.
"This could open up all kinds of possibilities to create much simpler algorithms for programming 3D vision into robots," Vivek Nityananda, a neuroscience research associate with Newcastle University was quoted as saying.
Praying mantises have stereoscopic vision unlike most invertebrates.
In lab experiments, the researchers attached tiny 3D glasses to an insect using beeswax.
They monitored the insect in front of a computer that displayed 3D images.
"If the researchers can fool praying mantises into making errors in judgment about depth, it will prove that they actually are judging 3D," Nityananda noted in a University press release.
