The world’s most incredible eyes

Mantis shrimps have the arguably the most incredible eyes of any animal. Each eye has three areas that can independently focus on objects, which means that a single mantis shrimp eye has “trinocular vision”. Our eyes have receptors that are tuned to three colours; those of mantis shrimps are tuned to at least twelve. And they can tune individual light-sensitive cells to local light levels.

Mantis shrimps can even see a special type of light – ‘circularly polarised light’ – that no other animal can. This ability allows them to send secret messages, produced by circularly polarised light reflecting off different parts of their shell. The ability hinges on a structure in their eyes that’s similar to technology found in our CD and DVD players. The mantis shrimp’s biological engineering completely outclasses our man-made efforts; if we could duplicate it, we could have the basis of tomorrow’s multimedia players and hard drives.