2018 participants
Jerry Tan Hai Kok
The praying mantis has the remarkable ability to perceive the world in three dimensions and accomplishes this with a visual system much simpler than ours. This project investigates how mantids use looming (the apparent increase in size of an object as it approaches the viewer) to perceive the depth of moving objects.
Simulated prey were animated using a combination of looming and optic flow stimuli then presented in a random order to a cohort of Sphodromantis Lineola. The mantids would strike when the prey, which were presented with an insect 3D cinema, appeared to be within its catch range. The mean number of strikes for each condition were then analysed to determine the specific visual cue(s) used to determine looming. The results suggested that the mantis perceives looming by detecting the motion of a luminance edge (the border between two areas of different light intensity).
Funding source: Newcastle University
Supervisors: Jenny Read and Vivek Nityananda