What you are seeing, is a fiddler crab's view of the world.

Compared to humans it has much smaller eyes and brains, but still is extremely competent in using vision to make snap decisions and spot trouble.

Which is more than most robots can. But research into how fiddler crabs use vision, may one day help robots to act autonomously.

Even though the crabs don't see as much fine detail as humans, their eyes are tailored to the specific needs in their flat crabworld.

For instance, crab eyes see the whole 360 degree panorama around them, they are able to perceive polarised light and are on stalks like periscopes which fold into protective grooves when the crab enters the burrow.

They act as an early warning system, provide compass information for navigation, enable them to judge distance, to see birds flying above them and predators approaching from behind.

Although it's impossible to know how the world appears to a crab, Dr. Jochen Zeil of the Visual Science Group at the ANU Research School of Biological Sciences is studying, filming and carrying out experiments with the fiddler crab to find out more about the way they interpret the world around them.

"The crabs are interesting because they have an interesting visual system. They have interesting behavior and they operate in a way where you can hope to analyse this behavior very clearly."

Dr. Zeil has been studying the scope of the crab's vision by placing cameras at crab eye level and then analysing the scenes in "crabworld".

By placing obstacles in the crab's path, he is hoping to work out what information the crab uses to accurately and swiftly find its way back to its own burrow, when in danger.

"These studies may help us to understand what makes these even simple systems, robust, flexible and efficient in their use of vision to make decisions and navigate. And that is a big issue in designing autonomous vehicles for instance, or robots that are able to navigate in an unknown terrain."