Tarantula wolf spiders use their lateral eyes to calculate distance

A necessary part of any animal's sense of direction is a positioning system, allowing it to have an idea of the relation between where it is and where it wants to go; this is known as odometry. A new study shows that tarantula wolf spiders (Lycosa tarantula) use their posterior lateral eyes and anterior lateral eyes (they have a total of four pairs of eyes) to establish the distance they have traveled.