Your Man Friday’s Ideas: Enviable Uncommon Senses
It is easy and natural to assume everyone and every creature perceives the world the same way we do, but of course, this not true. A lot of apparently inexplicable animal behaviour can only be understood if we realize that they might have senses we can’t imagine—but can sometimes envy.
TEN SUPER-SENSES
We have retained and developed those senses that
evolved as useful for our survival, but they are different for other creatures
with other needs. Here is a list of some amazing sensory capabilities that
serve other members of the animal kingdom. (Any of them are worth following up
on for fascinating reading.)
http://listverse.com/2013/04/13/10-unusual-animal-senses/
MAGNETIC FIELD DETECTORS AND INTUITIVE TRIGONMETRY
A surprising number of creatures can sense magnetic
fields, including ants, bees, sharks, turtles, tuna, salmon, and homing pigeons,
as well as many migratory birds. Even dogs, for some unknown reason, often poop
in alignment with magnetic north!) And many animals seem to be able to do
trigonometry intuitively. (No math course and calculator—or huge cerebral
cortex—required.) Here is an amazing
example of foxes using this special sense and their intuitive grasp of trig to
get dinner. http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2014/01/03/259136596/youre-invisible-but-ill-eat-you-anyway-secrets-of-snow-diving-foxes
WE CAN’T KNOW WHAT A DOG’S NOSE KNOWS
Snakes have the equivalent of the olfactory
epithelium we have in our noses (but tuned for different size molecules) called
Jacobsen's Organ. A snake's forked tongue collects chemicals from the air and
delivers it to this organ, which is located in the roof of its mouth! With it
they can detect pheromones (which we can’t) that they use to find potential
prey. Dogs have it too (but in their noses), and it partially accounts for
their incredible sense of smell, which is estimated to be 10,000 to 100,000
times as powerful as ours.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/dogs-sense-of-smell.html
