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Frog’s response to artificial ants

A frog’s eyes include networks of nerves that act as bug detectors — signaling to the frog’s brain whenever they see motion that’s typical of tasty bugs. That insight was revealed in 1959 in the study ”What the Frog’s Eye Tells the Frog’s Brain,” written with Jerry Lettvin, Humberto Maturana, Warren McCullough, and Walter Pitts.

This video shows a frog responding to bug-like motion displayed on an iPhone:

(Thanks to Dan Meyer for bringing this video to our attention.)

Posted by Marc Abrahams on Sunday, March 10th, 2013 at 12:02 am under News about research.

  • jodan447

    I am not sure if frogs are responding to the objects by using such sophisticated nerve system as “bug detectors”
    They just try to chase “any” tiny moving objects.
    Indeed, we can easily catch frogs by waving a line/thread with a tiny piece of cloth (2 mm in diameter) of some clear color (eg., red, blue) instead of some bait in front of frogs.
    Some of us exhibit similar behaviors by using “detectors of spring ~”