Sharpened Senses in the Animal World
By tony leather, 21st Apr 2012 | Follow this author
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It is not just human vision that is wanting, either, because our sense of taste is comparatively abysmal, just like our ability to smell things.
Sharpened Senses in the Animal World
Where we humans struggle to really see anything at all, at night, we become truly aware of the limitations nature has imposed upon our five senses, compared to those of many species that share the natural world with us, but interpret the signals they receive from it very differently, even plants having some sensory abilities that outshine ours.
The ability to see is our most important sense, aour eyes being very complex structures indeed. Though human vision can detect a wide range of colors, andreasonably good distance recognition, our optic senses seem laughable, when compared to those of other creatures.
For example, an Eagle thousands of feet above ground will spot a distant rabbit below with pinpoint accuracy, and some bird species could have retinal cells sensitive to magnetism, within their eyes, helping them to navigate vast distances so effortlessly.
Research scientists are convinced that this so-called magnetic sensing is common to all animal life, to varying degrees, and humans with good s directional senses will have t Magnetite fragments in the brains, the same stuff found in bird beaks , or Rainbow Trout snouts, built in natural compasses, apparently.
Highly sophisticated eyes, like those of bees, usually come in packages, these insects having five in total. Two large eyes, each with nearly 7,000 lenses, and three extremely specialized single lens eyes, enabling ultra-violet light vision. These are light wavelengths well beyond human range.
Inects view the world then, as do birds, in completely different ways to humans, from the angle of colour perception, and even plant-life hasfar more sensitivity to colour than does mankind. Their cells contain proteins so light sensitive and responsive to surrounding colors, that the taste of crops can be influenced by farmers providing different background colors for them.
It is not just human vision that is wanting, either, because our sense of taste is comparatively abysmal, just like our ability to smell things. An organ within the human nose, Jacobsens, known in animals as the verosomel organ, seems to have become less effective in humans, as evolution has progressed, yet is undoubtedly the most sensitive system of recognition in nature when fully functioning.
Bloodhounds, famously used as tracker dogs, are 10,000 times more sensitive to scents than humans, but compared to snakes, even Bloodhounds are second-rate, snake tongues able to the most detecting microscopic of chemical traces, meaning that prey many miles away from where the snake is can be tracked down. Indeed, the faint chemical signals called pheromones, unconsciously detected by human males when a female is interested, occur widely in nature, an examole of Jacobsens organ at work.i
This organ could well play a part in the sense of taste, though not yet scientifically proven , though it does appear that plants can also, in a manner of speaking, taste f chemical signatures, particular genes in plant cells enabling the sending of roots towards the richest food sources.
An acute sense of hearing is not, unfortunately, something any human can truly claim, as another human voices operates in the 70 to 80 decibel range, our ears detecting frequencies from 20 to 20,000 Hz, far too limited to suit some creatures in nature, for whom the hearing sense is vitally important.
Whales, for instance, respond to ultra and subsonic signals , utterly unintelligible to humans, using these, over thousands of miles of ocean, to communicate with one another. The biggest land mammal, Elephants employ infrasound for contact over distance, bats being known to emit very high-pitched sounds, enabling them to accurately locate obstacles in their path, and prey, as they interpret the sounds bouncing back to them.
Sound is also now known to influence plant-life, and research has shown that, when subjected to constant noise at human-voice level, some plants double growth- rates, germinate 90% quicker. Not only that, but there is response to touch, plants becoming sturdier and more productive because the grower spent a little time stroking the plant.
On this world of ours, humanity may be at the top of the food chain, but nature has a habit of putting us firmly in our place, when we get too cocky, and until we humans possess super senses, many other, supposedly lesser creatures will continue to push us into the shade, where we really belong. If truth were being told, the only super sense humanity has is the gigantic sense of self.
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