Shrimp change their "sunglasses" depending on brightness? Carrie Straight 06.08.01 Mantis shrimp (Haptosquilla trispinosa) use special filters over their photoreceptors (part of the eyes that let in light and help animals see) to see better at different depths of the ocean. The filters are little colored plates that fit over the photoreceptors. Different filter colors let in different types of light. Mantis shrimp populations deeper in the ocean have more filters for shorter wavelengths than those in shallow water. This helps the shrimp in deeper water see better given the low availability of light. Some researchers wanted to figure out if these populations got their different eye filters because of the environment they grew up in. To test this, they got some offspring of shallow water living adults. They took the shrimp into the laboratory. They raised the shrimp in tanks where the lighting simulated the deep sea and some in tanks where the lighting simulated shallow water. The shrimp that grew up in simulated shallow-water tanks had filters over their photoreceptors like their shallow-water living parents. However, the shrimp in simulated deep-sea tanks developed filters like shrimp that lived in the deep sea. This reveals that young mantis shrimp can change or "tune" their vision depending on the environment they grow up in. Cronin, Thomas W., Roy L. Cadwell, and Justin Marshall. 2001. Tunable colour vision in a mantis shrimp. Nature 411: 547-8. ©2001 The Aurora Collection, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Site Development by: Interactive Multimedia. Inc.