![]() ![]() “But in any event, they should be able to see the moon, they should be able to see that it’s round.” “It just depends on how sensitive they are to the differences in brightness across the moon,” Morehouse says. Not only the moon, but possibly the dark patches on its face that used to be lunar lava seas. ![]() With a visual acuity allowing jumping spiders to resolve objects 0.07 degrees apart, the full moon-which covers a whopping 0.5 degrees on the sky-would be easy to spot, if the spiders looked up at night. After all, their eyes work like little Galilean telescopes. Inspired by the astronomers, Morehouse decided to do a quick calculation about whether jumping spiders can see the moon. When Levesque’s spider saw a green spot, it naturally decided to stalk and chase it, as all good spiders (and cats) should do.īut without the ability to discern red, the zebra spider perhaps perceived that spot as a dimmer, boring shade of unexciting green, Morehouse says. So, what Lomax and Levesque observed is exactly what Morehouse expected. Most jumping spiders can only see essentially two colors: Green and everything else, including ultraviolet. Jumping spiders, such as this peacock spider, have elaborate courtship dances. (Read: " Surprise: Jumping Spiders Can See More Colors Than You Can.") Jumping spiders need stellar sight to run after and pounce on prey, rather than spinning a web and waiting. Their visual acuity, meaning how well they discern two discrete objects, is on par with cats, pigeons, and some dogs-but still not quite as good as us. He told them jumping spiders have extremely good vision. Then he realized that several astronomers had become fascinated with their interloping spiders and were trying to figure out how spider vision worked. “And I had over 100 notifications, and I couldn’t figure out what it was all about.” “I was watching the Stanley Cup final and then my team lost and I was all sorts of upset about it and was like ‘Aww, I’ll check Twitter before I go to bed,’” Morehouse tells National Geographic. Spider VisionĮnter Nathan Morehouse, whose lab at the University of Cincinnati specializes in studying jumping spider vision. This being Twitter, it didn’t take long for those questions to find answers. Which Color Laser Pointer Will Best Attract This Spider?īut were the spider’s different responses to the laser colors important? What did this impromptu experiment have to say about spider eyes?
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