Stereo vision: Mantises see 3-D differently, study says

PARIS – Praying mantises sporting tiny 3-D glasses -- held in place with beeswax -- have revealed a new kind of "stereo" vision that may help improve robot sight, researchers said Thursday. Sporting two teardrop-shaped, light-filtering lenses in lab experiments, the insects lashed out at special 3-D film images of tempting prey, a team of scientists said. Scientists then observed reactions to more complex images, and learned that mantis vision works very differently from ours. Humans can naturally judge depth when shown a still image. However, in mantises, such 3-D perception activates when there is movement.