Praying mantises are the only invertebrates capable of seeing in three dimensions (I'm now trying to picture how the rest of the spineless animal kingdom sees). Because they're so unique among their kind, scientists at Newcastle University (United Kingdom) wondered if they processed the three dimensions in the same way as vertebrates, PBS reported.

Dr. Jenny Read, who led the experiment, summarized praying mantis' visual abilities with this backhand compliment in the press release.

"Despite their minute brains, mantises are sophisticated visual hunters which can capture prey with terrifying efficiency," Read said. "We can learn a lot by studying how they perceive the world."

To understand how mantis' perceived the world around them, Read and colleagues outfitted them with the world's smallest 3-D glasses (like the ones used in movies) and manipulated their depth perception in a series of experiments (see below video). Studying how mantis' reacted to objects that weren't actually there would give researchers clues into how the invertebrates processed the 3-D world.

Currently, Read and her team are only in the data-collecting stage. If they discover significant differences between mantis and human sight, he findings could help program 3-D capabilities in robots.

"If we find that the way mantises process 3-D vision is very different to the way humans do it," said Dr. Vivek Nityananda, a research associate at Newcastle University, "then that could open up all kinds of possibilities to create much simpler algorithms for programming 3D vision into robots."