I see with my amazing eye…

While researching eyesight, I discovered the amazing eyes of the Mantis Shrimp. The mantis shrimp is usually found in tropical waters and is known for its aggressive style of attack. They are predators with an extremely sharp and powerful claw. One of their most formidable traits however, is their amazing eyesight. Their eyes are made up of 10,000 visual units called ommatidia, each one containing a lens and a series of light sensitive cells. In the mantis shrimp each ommatidia row has a particular function like detecting light or color. The incredible sight of the mantis shrimp is much better than a human’s sight, especially their color vision. This is because humans have only three types of color receptors while the mantis shrimp has twelve types. The mantis shrimp also has ultraviolet, infrared, and polarized light vision. Their eyesight helps them to be incredible predators by allowing them to see their prey from many angles. The mantis shrimp’s eyes are on stalks that can rotate up to 70 degrees Therefore, mantis shrimps can use their immense peripheral vision to hunt their prey. Depth perception is also very important to predators and each eye of the mantis shrimp has complete depth perception. This means that if the mantis shrimp were to lose one eye, it would still be able to perceive depth as well as a human with two eyes. Even if it is wounded, it can still hunt prey and survive.