Time flies: Insects’ ‘bullet time’ helps avoid swatting
Irish and Scottish scientists have now shown that animals, insects and birds’ ability to perceive time is linked to their pace of life.
They have found that the rate at which time is perceived varies across animals.
In particular, flies owe their skill at avoiding rolled up newspapers to their ability to observe motion on a finer time-scale than human eyes can achieve.
They avoid the newspaper in a similar fashion to the ‘bullet time’ sequence in the film, The Matrix.
Not so fortunate is a species of tiger beetle that runs faster than its eyes can keep up — it becomes blinded and has to stop now and again to re-evaluate its prey’s position.
Even in humans, athletes in various sports have been shown to quicken their eyes’ ability to track moving balls during games.
In essence, the study led by scientists from Trinity College Dublin, and including researchers from the University of Edinburgh and University of St Andrews, found that animals’ ability to perceive time is linked to their pace of life.
The study, published in the leading international journal — Animal Behaviour, found small animals, such as some birds, perceive more information in a unit of time and experience time more slowly that largeranimals, such as turtles.
“We are beginning to understand that there is a whole world of detail out there and that only some animals can perceive, and it’s fascinating to think of how they might perceive the world differently to us,” said Prof Andrew Jackson from the School of Natural Science at TCD.
The reason pet dogs see flickering televisions is their eyes have a refresh rate higher than the TV screen.
Prof Graeme Ruxton from the University of St Andrews in Scotland said having eyes sending updates to the brain at much higher frequencies than human eyes would be of no value if the brain could not process that information equally quickly.
