The Surprising Beauty of a Brightly Colored Mantis Shrimp With Incredible All Seeing Compound Eyes

A wordless clip from the Monterey Bay Aquarium showcases the surprising beauty of a mantis shrimp, whose purple eyes boast an elaborate compound visual system allowing each eye to move independently from one another. While mantis shrimp have been known to be a bit psycho and punch out an opponent with serious force, it’s their incredibly complex polarized vision that makes them so remarkable.

With more color receptors than us, and divided into three bands that allow for depth perception from just one of their eyeballs, the independently controllable eyes of the mantis shrimp are some of the most stunning in nature, and a truly ocular rift from the way we perceive the sights of the sea.