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October 09, 2010

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John Sullivan

Very cool. A squid's would seem to require stereoscopic vision to estimate distance to a prey item and yet the eyes on the squid I remember dissecting were 180° opposed. Any idea if and how they achieve that?

DianeAKelly

I had to dive into the library to find an answer to that one: turns out that having a body made up mainly of muscle means that squid can temporarily get binocular vision if they need it by squeezing their eyes toward the front of their head. Nice photos of the process can be found at Cepahalove (http://cephalove.southernfriedscience.com/?p=45).

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  • Diane A. Kelly
    Diane Kelly is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she studies the neural wiring and mechanical engineering of reproductive systems.
  • James L. Cambias
    Jim Cambias writes science fiction and designs games in the lonely wilderness of Western Massachusetts.

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