A percussive drill hammers through the walls of the house each day, cracking the concrete, while at the same time a horn blasts from the next room. You no longer understand your own words in your apartment. You can’t sleep at night, spotlights cast a bright light into your windows: it can be similar to animals having to deal with the human environment. But how do animals feel, and what senses do they have?
Shivering sensors in the hair or a heat sensor in the mouth
Whether it’s a slight ripple on the water, magnetic or electric fields: animals use senses that we humans don’t have. Sometimes, every hair on their body contains neurons for touch. Seals can feel the current from a single herring 200 meters away, frog fetuses have crystals in their inner ears that warn of snakes eager to eat, vipers sense infrared sensors in their mouths, mice use “ultrasonic calls,” and turtles find themselves on one island. In the sea where they were born decades ago.
“They carry their value within themselves. We will explore their senses, for for you understand life betterEd Young
In his new book, science journalist Ed Young explores the immeasurably diverse world of animal senses. While humans focus heavily on visual perception and only get a “small part of a very huge world,” animals have many senses. And it is in no way better than smelling, hearing or seeing. Animals use the senses they feel and evaluate ultraviolet light and electric and magnetic fields, or they recognize small currents in water. They are senses that humans can only imagine with imagination and science. But it is “not a book in which we childishly list animals according to the acuity of their senses and consider them valuable only when their capabilities exceed our own,” says Ed Young. His book on diversity. Nor is it about the fact that different senses can be used to build new innovative technical devices such as space telescopes, hearing aids or military echo sounders. “They carry their value within themselves. We will explore their senses, for for you understand life better,” Young writes.
“Explorer. Communicator. Music geek. Web buff. Social media nerd. Food fanatic.”
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