Comments on: Mantis shrimp eyes outclass DVD players, inspire new technology

By: Adrian Blake

Adrian Blake — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 15:26:58 +0000

Glad to see you are all concentrating on pedantism here, because how else would people know you’re the cleverest person alive? Clearly that is the important part of this spectacular article. Shame on you Mr Yong, presenting such remarkable findings in an interesting way. Mantis shrimp also live in the sea, you didn’t mention that, and your article confused me as to how many legs they have. Ahh i feel superior already.

By: Philosophus

Philosophus — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:41:00 +0000

I’m not aware of anyone who uses “see polarization” as a shorthand for being able to distinguish polarization of light: “detect polarization” or “distinguish polarization” would be better, and are in fact used. Seeing is generally a poor term to use for many things. The meaning is far too ambiguous: I’d even be against using “see color”.
There’s a reason for jargon to exist, and unfortunately, when you try to remove it, you can easily make things unintentionally misleading.
masklinn: interestingly enough, this screen name was devised, years ago, to hide behind. I prefer that my discussions about science online not be connected with my actual research, and not be construed as official statements. When I constructed it, I was primarily working to combat outright crackpottery on Wikipedia, where my identity being known would have resulted in complaints to my institute and harassment of my colleagues; the name eventually became, however, what I use for almost all non-official discussions I have about science.

By: SD

SD — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:31:56 +0000

I guess Apple is Preparing a technology based on this – mantis shrimp

By: Nathan Myers

Nathan Myers — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:21:31 +0000

See, Zach’s confusion results from the misleading wording in the article. If the placement of circularly-polarizing markings on male and female shrimp are the only thing that visibly distinguishes them, then the shrimp are seeing something (sex dimorphism) that to us isn’t there. But of course the shrimp are visibly there, and those markings are reflecting/refracting/iridescing light we see just fine; it just looks the same to us.
“Matter hidden by dark energy”, by the way, also doesn’t make sense, but probably for different reasons.

By: Zach Miller

Zach Miller — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:29:08 +0000

That’s pretty neat. It sort of reminds me of the “Dark Visor” in Metroid Prime 2, a visor that you wear to see matter hidden by dark energy. The rest of the world looks kind of greyed-out, but the dark matter looks bright red. I wonder if the mantis shrimp is doing something similar: since the circularly polarized light is invisible to everyone else, these shrimp may be seeing things that, to the rest of us, aren’t even there!
Sometimes I wonder if there are organisms that might only be seen on the spectrums we cannot see. I doubt it, but that would be so cool!

By: masklinn

masklinn — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:32:32 +0000

Why do people hide behind weird names?

Lots of www denizens tend to use screen names instead of real names, usually out of habit. They don’t “hide” behind them (it’s not like seeing a random comment by “Joe Blow” would help you much in identifying the person would it?). It’s just that they identify differently.

By: Nathan Myers

Nathan Myers — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:09:38 +0000

The conflict between Nick and “Philosophus” is common between people deep in a field and outsiders. People deep in a field develop a shorthand, and don’t even consider interpretations of their words that don’t make sense in terms of what else they know. For outsiders the shorthand may be actively misleading. Some insiders are better at avoiding dependence on shorthand than others.
If Ed said “cats can’t see red light”, he would be speaking the same way as in the article, and would be equally misleading: they can see red light, they just can’t distinguish it from green. By contrast, they, and we, can’t see infrared light at all.

By: Nicholas Roberts

Nicholas Roberts — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:58:22 +0000

In reply to Philosophus
Ed has done a great job of writing up our paper. Philosophus seems to forgot that we also commonly talk about seeing colour. Well of course, just like polarized light, we don’t see a colour, it’s a representation of comparative processing of several photoreceptor inputs. But no one is going to attack you for saying “I see a colour”
It’s perfectly fine to talk about seeing polarized light, seeing the polarization of light or discriminating between different polarizations (linear or circular).
The important part of the above discovery, and that Philosophus seems to have missed entirely, is that this is a completely new optical structure to convert between linearly and circularly polarized light. Even in our world of remarkable technology, evolution has refined some fantastic optics that still continue to make us go Wow.
Nick Roberts
PS Why do people hide behind weird names?

By: Rich

Rich — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:05:39 +0000

What on earth does “can travel through water at 10,000 times the acceleration of gravity” mean?

By: James S.

James S. — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 06:37:12 +0000

How do you know it was easy to evolve?