Hi all!
I can not touch on anything said up to this point in the realm of mathematics, since it has always been, shall we say, outside my frame of reference (I was no good at it), but I did understand a lot of the rest, and that was interesting.
I think that I have a fairly good (laymen level) grasp of the fundamentals of stereoscopic vision, and the triangulation of the whole arrangement which is so necessary for the approximation of distance, which was well illustrated by the test suggested earlier, by Tiax on the first page, consisting of closing one eye, and then touching the index fingers together.
So I got to thinking about my parakeet, which is allowed out every day to fly around the kitchen (which he does with great precision). His eyes are on the sides of his head, so presumably the bird is incapable of approximating distances by means of triangulation when in forward motion, which it seems to me would be of paramount importance when it comes to flight, where the ability to gauge distance is critical when in forward motion. So the bird is apparently working with two separate two dimensional images, which are completely different from one another, and combining them in a way that gives it the ability to judge distance with a level of accuracy equal to (or surpassing?) that of triangulation. The same goes for fish, an even more extreme example of the “side mounted” arrangement. Yet, there they are, darting in and out of razor sharp coral with a mere millimeter to spare, again, using two separate and completely different two dimensional images. I am just wondering how that would work, since the two images are completely different, and neither the bird nor the fish can look straight ahead like we can with our “forward mounted” eyes during forward motion. Just curious, does any one know what the mechanism is there? Is there some simple (laymen level) explanation I am missing (remember, no equations) which is similar to triangulation? Does it have a name?
Hope this is not to far off topic! Guenn
