Roberts thinks that the eye's structure is "beautifully simple". It's all in the shapes of the cells, their size, and the amount of fat in their membranes. For all its outstanding performance, the eye's abilities were probably easy to evolve, requiring only small tweaks to the basic blueprint of the light-detecting cells.
Reads like protection against anti-evolution attacks to me, did anyone else find that odd?
It's really sad that the first thing you (and I, too!) think of when reading this sentence are anti science crooks. Infecting our minds so thoroughly is a impressive achievment.
Agreed, I've read a lot on the Mantis Shrimp (I became fascinated with them for a project when I was younger) and everything about them is ultimately amazing, but requires no 'amazing' leap of evolution. Their eyesight, their claws, their colouring are all amazing but are ultimately not very complex.
The thing not mentioned fully in the article is that when the Mantis Shrimp strikes it causes cavitation, which results in sonoluminescence. What is still unknown is whether or not the Mantis Shrimp can detect this or not as we have to use special low-light cameras. However as the Mantis Shrimp can see in IR->UV it has the range of sight to see any wavelength given off by sonoluminescence, and it would certainly see the heat produced by the effect.
The Mantis Shrimp punches with 1500N and are capable of dismembering its prey (and shattering human fingers), but what's truly amazing is that they very rarely miss (as in almost never) and when they do, the shockwave produced when the cavitation bubbles collapse often exerts enough force to kill its prey anyway (either by rupturing gills, or bursting internal organs). Yet their claw mechanism is very simple (IIRC) they have a hinged exoskeleton and at the other end of the V-shaped wedge is the 'saddle' a spring that distributes the load throughout enabling it to store immense energies without breaking or buckling. Essentially all their force comes from a very rudimentary use of leverage and a spring, both of which enable the fastest punch in the world.
The original function of the Mantis Shrimps highly developed eyes is unknown, however it has certainly made use of it. Not only does it enable them to recognize different varieties of prey and predator, which enable them to hunt many transparent species with decided ease. It also enables them to hunt (their eyes can apparently series or parallel process the information it receives) exceptionally well and their trinocular vision (each eye has trinocular vision) enables superior depth perception. Their eyes also play a huge part in their mating as not only do they peacock into the UV range, but they also actively fluoresce when mating. Furthermore it plays a part in their mating, as the females are only fertile in a specific portion of the tidal cycle, the ability to perceive the phase of the moon would enable the males to conserve effort. Another function of seeing the moon is that it enables them to avoid being stranded (they're incapable of walking outside of water, however they are able to roll far enough to reach rock puddles or the waters edge).
The truly amazing thing about Mantis Shrimp is that despite being a predator (which in and of itself is relatively unique amongst their relative species) they can actually become docile around 'their human' when kept in a tank as they're capable of recognizing individual humans, behaving differently around them (IE not breaking their fingers), and can recognize voices. They also exhibit complex social behaviour, including ritualized fighting and hunt coordination (usually between monogamous pairs). As they typically live to 20-30 years in the wild, it will be interesting what researches can learn from them. It's mainly only recently that researches have become interested in them, so perhaps there will be many more discoveries on both their biological abilities and the social abilities capable with the invertebrate brain.
To me, the entire species appears as a big F-you to anti-evolutionists. Nothing in them evolved without a seeming purpose, it all evolved with many applications to. There are many species in the world that have evolutionary adaptations that appeared for one specific purpose, where as the Mantis Shrimps adaptations serve a long list of purposes.
Roberts thinks that the eye's structure is "beautifully simple". It's all in the shapes of the cells, their size, and the amount of fat in their membranes. For all its outstanding performance, the eye's abilities were probably easy to evolve, requiring only small tweaks to the basic blueprint of the light-detecting cells.
Reads like protection against anti-evolution attacks to me, did anyone else find that odd?