Mantis Shrimps ‘See’ Cancer, Is Inspiration For New Camera

Nature is truly an inspiration for budding scientists everywhere – otherwise, how else would ordinary man get the inspiration to actually take to the skies in the past, so much so that we have been living in the jet age for quite the longest time already? Well, we have reported on how dogs are able to be trained to sniff out cancer cells, and this time around, it would be a crustacean that would help us humans out. Inspired by the eyes of mantis shrimps, Australian researchers have used that as a blueprint to develop sensors which are capable of detecting cancer while visualizing brain activity.

All of the hard work was done by scientists over at the University of Queensland in Australia, where they have “translated”, so to speak, the ability for mantis shrimps to actually see cancers within one’s body. This ability has been turned into a camera, and in due time, the technology might actually be incorporated into a smartphone device.

This is made possible as mantis shrimp carry compound eyes, being an eye that has been specially tuned to detect polarized light, and this kind of light will reflect differently off various tissues, allowing it to tell the difference between cancerous or healthy tissue. [Press Release]

Edwin Kee
Categories: Medical
Tags: cancer, Science