STUDY: Animals’ perception of time is linked to the pace of their life
A research study showed variation in time perception is largely driven by the pace of a species’s lifestyle. A cup falling to the floor, a car speeding past on the street or a series of lightning strikes – for us humans, an event on the scale of a second is typically a blur. But animals all process a different amount of visual information in a second. To us, a dragonfly may seem like Neo in the Matrix experiencing bullet time, seeing the world in slow motion. Hence while a second may be physically the same for every organism on Earth, how you perceive it depends on how fast you live.
THE CONVERSATION: As you read this, the screen is probably flashing over 240 times per second, yet, as a human, you won’t notice this flickering light. However, to a fruit fly hovering above your head, the screen would represent a strobe light fit for an Ibiza rave. This is because the way different species sample time, and the rates at which they can perceive it, varies greatly across the animal kingdom.
To us, a fast moving ball might seem like a blur but to dragonflies, pigeons and even bigclaw snapping shrimp it can be seen in great detail. But for species like snails or certain deep sea fish, like the escolar, the motion is probably too fast to register at all. But why do animals perceive time differently?… An analysis showed this variation in time perception is largely driven by the pace of a species’s lifestyle…
It showed that temporal perception has even greater variation than scientists may have realised. Our perceptual limit as humans is approximately 65 flashes per second. However, birds, such as the collared flycatcher, can see up to 138 flashes per second while tsetse flies and dragonflies can distinguish up to 300 flashes per second. At 65 flashes per second (or Hz), humans display respectable temporal perception abilities compared to other animals. It is higher compared to many mammals, such as rats at 47 Hz, but slightly lower than dogs (84 Hz).
Our eyes seem even more respectable when compared to the slowest eyes in the animal kingdom, such as the deep sea fish, the escolar, which can only perceive 12 flashes per second or the most extreme cases of the crown-of-thorns starfish and giant African snail, both of which can only perceive 0.7 flashes per second… We also found that in aquatic environments smaller species had faster vision… So what does a second feel like to a dragonfly or to a snail?…
A cup falling to the floor, a car speeding past on the street or a series of lightning strikes – for us humans, an event on the scale of a second is typically a blur, something we can just about register but not in much detail. But animals all process a different amount of visual information in a second. To us, a dragonfly may seem like Neo in the Matrix experiencing bullet time, seeing the world in slow motion… Hence while a second may be physically the same for every organism on Earth, how you perceive it depends on how fast you live. KEVIN HEALY
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