How Spiders See the World

With their big eyes, adorable courtship dances, and cat-like predatory pounces, jumping spiders are appealing even to many arachnophobes. In this talk, I’ll introduce you to these spiders and tell you about how a tiny animal with a sesame-seed sized brain gathers and analyzes information from its eight eyes.

Beth Jakob is a Wendell resident and Professor of Biology at Umass Amherst. Her area of research is “Jumping spider perception, especially the control of visual attention and how input from multiple eyes is integrated.” & “Behavioral ecology and evolution of learned behaviors, using jumping spiders as model organisms.”