I invite you to meet the awesome jumping spider, whose eyes are very especially needed set up to be forward-facing for depth perception for their jumps, and who hunt other spiders, as well as the wolf spider, who are also a hunting (as opposed to web) spider.
In fact, you can use the chart of spider eye layouts to pretty much identify whether you’re looking at a spider who builds webs and waits or a spider who hunts:
Anyone with two big forward-facing eyes is probably looking around for their next meal; the rest are building a web, trapdoor, or taking some other approach.
Had a bunch of wolf spiders in the last shop i worked at as a welder. They have eye shine like cats and alligators. It was always easy to tell the wolf spiders from black widows even behind a dusty welding machine because you can see the little wolf spider eyes looking back at you.
Also crabs. I mean, their eyes are often on stalks and more mobile than mammalian eyes, and they’re compound, so they have a very wide field of view, but they’re still often basically in front, and they do apparently provide depth cues for hunting thanks to this.
It also occurred to me to look up about dragonflies, and it seems they mostly hunt dorsally (which is a pretty viable option if you’re flying). BUT I found this article about Damselflies, which notes that they rely on binocular overlap and line up their prey in front of them. Which is pretty cool.
Horseshoe crabs have nine different types of eyes. Even that tail is essentially a kind of eye, covered with photoreceptors. Not sure of the relevance of this horseshoe crab fact, it’s just fucking interesting.
I invite you to meet the awesome jumping spider, whose eyes are very especially needed set up to be forward-facing for depth perception for their jumps, and who hunt other spiders, as well as the wolf spider, who are also a hunting (as opposed to web) spider.
In fact, you can use the chart of spider eye layouts to pretty much identify whether you’re looking at a spider who builds webs and waits or a spider who hunts:
Anyone with two big forward-facing eyes is probably looking around for their next meal; the rest are building a web, trapdoor, or taking some other approach.
Those are some wild gamepad layouts
Huntsman is also a hunting spider
spider photo
Had a bunch of wolf spiders in the last shop i worked at as a welder. They have eye shine like cats and alligators. It was always easy to tell the wolf spiders from black widows even behind a dusty welding machine because you can see the little wolf spider eyes looking back at you.
Also crabs. I mean, their eyes are often on stalks and more mobile than mammalian eyes, and they’re compound, so they have a very wide field of view, but they’re still often basically in front, and they do apparently provide depth cues for hunting thanks to this.
https://www.jneurosci.org/content/38/31/6933
It also occurred to me to look up about dragonflies, and it seems they mostly hunt dorsally (which is a pretty viable option if you’re flying). BUT I found this article about Damselflies, which notes that they rely on binocular overlap and line up their prey in front of them. Which is pretty cool.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982219316641
Horseshoe crabs have nine different types of eyes. Even that tail is essentially a kind of eye, covered with photoreceptors. Not sure of the relevance of this horseshoe crab fact, it’s just fucking interesting.