Cuttlefish use stereopsis to strike at prey

R. C. Feord, M. E. Sumner, S. Pusdekar, L. Kalra, P. T. Gonzalez-Bellido, Trevor J. Wardill

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

35 Scopus citations

Abstract

The camera-type eyes of vertebrates and cephalopods exhibit remarkable convergence, but it is currently unknown whether the mechanisms for visual information processing in these brains, which exhibit wildly disparate architecture, are also shared. To investigate stereopsis in a cephalopod species, we affixed “anaglyph” glasses to cuttlefish and used a three-dimensional perception paradigm. We show that (i) cuttlefish have also evolved stereopsis (i.e., the ability to extract depth information from the disparity between left and right visual fields); (ii) when stereopsis information is intact, the time and distance covered before striking at a target are shorter; (iii) stereopsis in cuttlefish works differently to vertebrates, as cuttlefish can extract stereopsis cues from anticorrelated stimuli. These findings demonstrate that although there is convergent evolution in depth computation, cuttlefish stereopsis is likely afforded by a different algorithm than in humans, and not just a different implementation.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article numbereaay6036
JournalScience Advances
Volume6
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 8 2020

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2020 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).

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