Who would have thought that an extremely energy-efficient 3D camera is in a large part due to a tiny jumping spider?
Engineers at Northwestern University wanted to create a “depth sensor that could be used in resource-constrained situations where users don’t have unlimited access to power.”1 To put together this special camera, they turned to the jumping spider for design inspiration.
Jumping spiders have eight eyes, each with numerous layers of retinas.2 According to the researchers, “Each retinal layer captures an image focused at a slightly different distance.”1 Then, the spiders collect pairs of these images, and their tiny brain compares the differences in sharpness to judge distance.
Incredibly, this is done all within a section of their brain that’s smaller than a poppy seed. But with so few neurons (nerve cells), how can the creature accomplish it? The answer seems to be the brain circuits’ interconnectivity and modularity—not simply a large number of neurons. These circuits are connected and arranged in a very precise manner in order to function as optimally as they do.
The Northwestern engineers designed their SpiderCam to use a similar optical design as the real spider. But they didn’t use sophisticated software on a typical processor when putting together the camera’s optics. Instead, they based it on what the jumping spider was created to do, by building “an algorithm [a finite sequence of well-defined instructions] directly into a . . . customizable computer chip optimized for energy-efficient processing.”1 Their prototype could generate depth maps at incredibly fast speeds while using minimal power. At some point in the future, the team hopes to expand this technology by making other devices.
Studying and then copying parts of the excellent vision of the jumping spider like the researchers did is called biomimicry, or biomimetics.3,4 Through the decades, such emulation has been seen repeatedly in biology, and for good reason: Jesus, the Creator, thought of and designed the jumping spider first in all its exquisite detail. Twenty-first-century scientists and engineers have only copied the delicate features of the jumping spider as it was originally created in the beginning.
References
- Morris, A. Jumping Spiders Inspire Ultra-Efficient 3D Camera. Northwestern University news release. Posted on news.northwestern.edu June 7, 2026.
- Sherwin, F. Retina Design. Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org April 20, 2023.
- Sherwin, F. 2012. Technological Innovations from the Creator. Acts & Facts. 41 (4): 15.
- Thomas, B. Millions of Years of Evolution Equal Engineering? Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org May 14, 2014.
* Dr. Sherwin is a science news writer at the Institute for Creation Research. He earned an M.A. in invertebrate zoology from the University of Northern Colorado and received an honorary doctorate of science from Pensacola Christian College.
