Biologists at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia really lucked out when they chose spiders for a simple but very clever experiment exploring invertebrate cognition. Creating a virtual reality program that the spiders are able to watch from 3D printed treadmills, they saw that the arachnids were likely to have more activity in the VR games when they had seen previous symbols and beacons there before. They are good subjects for the VR research due to their ocular structure. Read more about their research in the full story: http://3dprint.com/84047/3d-print-spider-vr-treadmills/


Below is a photo of a jumping spider, the species the researchers studied: