Mantis Shrimp See By One-Step Process
Marine biologists have long been mystified as to why mantis shrimp, otherwise known as stomatopod crustaceans, boast up to 12 different types of photoreceptors in their retinas — more than any animal in the kingdom.
A team of marine biologists from the Queensland Brain Institute, Brisbane, and National Cheng Kung University,Taiwan, became even more perplexed when they tested the shrimps and found that, even with all those extra receptors, the stomatopods couldn't tell the difference between gradations of colors, which humans, with their paltry three types of receptors can easily pick out within just a few nanometers difference of each other.
But after thinking about it for a while, the biologists said in Friday's issue of Science, they had finally figured it out.