Out of Sight

Did I already mention that ever since I was a kid I was fascinated with insects and that the ones that fascinated me the most were mantises? Why yes, I believe I did. The biggest and most common mantis in my area was the bush mantis ( Sphodromantis viridis ) . that’s the reason I kept them as pets when I was younger, and was also why I decided to raise a few in 2011 and photograph their entire life cycle.

First thing's first - I am not a software engineer and never had any formal programming training. I do like creating new things and I find computer vision fascinating. I believe that it is simpler than it might initially appear. All of this started as an attempt to create a normal Sudoku solving function, but after I did that, I thought it would be cooler to combine Sudoku solving with computer vision.  To make it a bit easier, I divided this operation into nine parts:       Grabbing the image.         Transferring the original image to B/W.         Finding the shape with the biggest bounding box. this is our (deformed) sudoku board.         Finding the corner coordinates of that shape.         Using the corners, warp that shape to a perfect square.         Find the digit in each cell (if there’s indeed a digit in it).         Solve the sudoku. ...

  Ok, so what we have here is a female flower crab spider ( Thomisus citrinellus ) eating a honey bee ( Apis mellifera ). The poor bee didn’t see it coming, as the crab spider was cunningly camouflaged to look like the petals of the flower it was sitting on (or most commonly, underneath). On the bee, you can see many jackal flies (Family Milichiidae ) which are kleptoparasites (it’s a thing, check the link) and feed on the bodily fluids of the dead bee. Remember, the bee’s body (yes, including the knees) has turned into mush inside the exoskeleton because the spider injected digestive enzymes in addition to the venom, so with very minimal effort, the flies can get a pretty nice soup! What’s that baby spider on top of the female you're asking? That’s no baby, it’s a full-grown male! About to become a daddy soon. It’s guarding the female, who is full of little spider eggs. At this point you’re probably thinking “She doesn’t need his help, seems like she can take care of herself” an...

  Since I was a kid I was fascinated with insects, and my favorite order of insect is, without a doubt, Mantodea (Praying Mantises). They are amazing at camouflaging themselves, imitating plants, catching prey, avoiding getting eaten by bigger animals, and much more. To add to all of that, they have a super cool alien look and they come in an assortment of colors! There’s so much to talk about when it comes to these intriguing creatures, but let’s use this photo I took of a bush mantis ( Sphodromantis viridis ) as an opportunity to discuss three cool vision features that they have and you might have not known about: 1. The Ocelli Three simple eyes that many insects have at the center of their forehead (the number might slightly vary). They are very sensitive to light, but don’t detect colors and shapes. Insects use these to determine the time of day, to detect if they are being shaded by a large animal, and possibly also for flight stabilization. You can see it in this image betwee...