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I suppose humans tend to underuse, or undertrain, their senses, so we fail to consider the possibility that other animals might be taking advantage of their sen
by evincarofautumn 9y ago
I suppose humans tend to underuse, or undertrain, their senses, so we fail to consider the possibility that other animals might be taking advantage of their senses in different ways.
In elementary school, I used to listen to the sounds of people’s pencils scratching on the desk, and could accurately determine what they were writing, especially if my head was near the desk and I knew what their handwriting looked like. Curves and lines, and strokes of different lengths and directions against the grain of the paper, have different frequency profiles; lifting and setting the pencil back down generates a tapping sound…that sort of thing.
People often don’t believe me when I tell them this, because they figure that human hearing just isn’t that sensitive, or that the sound of handwriting doesn’t convey that much information—but it does! You’ve simply never noticed or paid attention to it because you had no desire or reason to. Another animal might, for various reasons.
Once, my dad picked up my Magna-Doodle board as we stood outside my room, and started writing a message to me. I listened closely and said “…Clean your room?”—he had written “Cʟᴇᴀɴ Yᴏᴜʀ Rᴏᴏᴍ”—and I’ll never forget his perplexed look, first at me, then turning the board around to see if any light could be shining through. He still didn’t quite believe that I could do what I had just done in front of him!
- deftturtle 9y agoThe force is strong with you
- flycaliguy 9y agoThat's amazing. What about chalkboard writing? I imagine that would be louder, have more protracted strokes and the patterns could become more easily absorbed through watching the board. I should add though, that "clean your room" would be a pretty safe bet in most parent/child relationships.
- evincarofautumn 9y agoMy point is more that it’s not amazing, just something most people wouldn’t notice or think to try. Chalkboards were possible but harder, I think because of the distance—you don’t get the frequencies that don’t carry as well across a room. I could never really do it with whiteboards because they’re much quieter. And yeah, “clean your room” was definitely a safe bet, haha, then again we rely on context all the time when listening to speech too.
- jaggederest 9y agoI agree with you. I can often hazard a reasonable guess at what people are typing or writing based on the sound, and of course, hearing the touch tone sounds of a phone makes it relatively easy. Similarly, I will often turn off all the lights and navigate around my house/room by pure touch and sound, which is surprisingly easy given how much credence we give to sight as the paramount sense.
- agumonkey 9y agoMany sniffing attacks tapped into this. The sound of keys map to their shape and location quite often.
- k__ 9y agoSo true. When I learned to play guitar I was perplexed that my playing sounded bad, even when playing right. Later I started to listen better and heared stuff that wasn't encoded in the tabs, but still mattered. Also, I could smell different foods like cereals. When I was a floor above in my room I smelled people eating even uncooked stuff, and I knew exactl what. Couldn't do this anymore today
- evincarofautumn 9y agoAbsolutely, I found similar things studying linguistics & phonetics. You can read phonetic transcriptions of things and get the basic sounds down, but there’s no substitute for listening carefully & imitating a native speaker, just like studying performances of pro musicians. Sounds that are often transcribed the same may be pronounced differently in different languages. I share your strong sense of smell too. I could tell you if someone was cutting cucumbers two rooms away. Dunno how long that’ll last, although my mom still has quite a nose in her early 60s, so there’s hope.
- passwordqq 9y agoI believe you. Have you considered the possibility that it wasn't your ears?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- evincarofautumn 9y agoWell, I did when I was 4. What are you suggesting?
- passwordqq 9y agoSubconscious sensing is what was on my mind. Intuition in a way... not doubting it could be pure Ear related skill, just wondering what all you have considered so far...
- evincarofautumn 9y agoWell, I am unusually sensitive and intuitive, but I believe it’s entirely because I inherited certain physiological and psychological traits from my parents—I am honestly not much more than a combination of the two of them.
- passwordqq 9y agoAssuming mind does not go beyond matter ...
- agumonkey 9y agoModern society has a nasty side effect to forbid us to experiment with sophisticated yet intuitive notions. Simply learning drumming made my sense of touch, balance, and a ton of other parts of my brain extremely more acute and potent. Not dissimilar to when you grok induction on trees, all of a sudden a lot of things become clearer. Well similarly with a lot of focused attention to your senses you'll start to notice patterns and relationships that are invisible otherwise.
- agarden 9y agoThat's fascinating. Reminds me of Daniel Kish, who is totally blind but navigates freely by echo location. It seems that is something humans -- at least blind ones -- are generally capable of if they work at it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kish https://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/378577902/how-to-become-batman https://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/378577902/how-to-be...
- vlehto 9y agoI used to hear transistors very clearly. One of the things I knew as a kid from anther room or sometimes even from outside was if someone had their TV on. The noise was so high pitched that I didn't even consider it a noise. I just knew and didn't think much about it. One weird memory is that I remember detecting objects in silent and dark room at home if they were like 10cm from my head. Even with eyes closed. I'm not sure if it's real or kids magical thinking. But it could have been very high pitched/ambient noise echoing from surfaces.
- ajnin 9y agoWhat you heard was probably not transistors but the flyback transformer that TVs use to generate the high voltage needed by cathode ray tubes. They generally operate around 16-18kHz, in the high range of human hearing that young people can hear easily but most people lose that ability as they age.
- JCharante 9y ago> One weird memory is that I remember detecting objects in silent and dark room at home if they were like 10cm from my head. Even with eyes closed. I'm not sure if it's real or kids magical thinking. But it could have been very high pitched/ambient noise echoing from surfaces. I think that's something that is common, but I have no idea what it's called. If you hold something (especially if it's sharp) up to someone's forehead but not close enough for it to make contact with them, they will get this weird sensation building up in their forehead. Or at least I and a lot of the people I've tried it with have. It wasn't in a completely dark room so I bet you could see the shadow through your eyelids but it's still pretty weird.