3 ms·
Ultra-Rapid Vision in Birds
- yrcyrc 1y agoEchoing to this perhaps, I heard birds can react 13 times faster than we do, which is especially useful in flight with hundreds or thousands of other birds.
- stronglikedan 1y agoyou should see the reaction time of the fly that's been in my house for days now
- chrisco255 1y agoThe trick to catching a fly is to move very slowly
- thenthenthen 1y agoCorrect, or let your cat do it :D
- aspenmayer 1y agoI have heard tell that this works. I have it on somewhat good authority that old ladies may also work with unpredictable results. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Was_an_Old_Lady_Who_Swallowed_a_Fly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Was_an_Old_Lady_Who_Swal...
- BaseBaal 1y agoWow this brought back a hazy memory of school sing-a-longs, thanks.
- user____name 1y agoYes, smaller animals, faster heartrate, more direct wiring, they probably experience time different than we do. Many human responses are purely unconcious muscle memory due to nervous system latency, this also implies the brain has evolved to be highly predictive as to compensate.
- nkrisc 1y ago> Many human responses are purely unconcious muscle memory due to nervous system latency, this also implies the brain has evolved to be highly predictive as to compensate. Which I’m reminded of every time I reach to grab a knife I’ve dropped, instead of just stepping back and letting it fall.
- modeless 1y agoHmm. It is possible to distinguish flickering lights at much higher than the flicker fusion threshold by using eye motion or other types of fast motion. A constant light will produce a smooth blur under motion while a flickering light will produce many distinct images. It seems like they don't have a way of checking whether the birds are using motion to distinguish the flickering light or not.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- amluto 1y agoI would go one step farther: I bet that plenty of humans could pass the test that the birds were subjected to at 120Hz or even higher. They didn't test whether the birds could actually resolve stimuli at high temporal resolution -- they tested whether the birds could detect flicker. A bright source pulsed at 120Hz is easily perceptible (and incredibly annoying), especially if it's a square wave with a duty cycle that isn't especially high. Where are the control animals?
- modeless 1y agoI don't think it's true that 120 Hz flicker is easily perceptible, absent motion. Flicker fusion is real. But motion is common, so that's why humans in practice can detect 120 Hz flicker (and find it annoying. Ban PWM taillights).
- 0_____0 1y agoPWM itself is fine!!! I have no idea why they set the PWM frequency so low. Even setting it to something like incredibly low like 1kHz would have solved the problem. In electronics land you almost have to try to get frequencies that low out of e.g. a microcontroller - you need a very high clock divide ratio to get a timer PWM period that long. I think they have actually done so, because I am noticing fewer low-frequency taillights these days.
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- aaron695 1y ago[dead]