Have you ever wondered if time passes by animals as quickly as it does by us humans? According to scientists, small animals’ sense of time is different from ours. Flies, for example, sense time slower, so they can avoid strikes brilliantly, as flies notice the blow directed at them in a “slow-motion” system, which allows them to escape in time.
Let us tell you more about how animals sense time:
Do animals sense time like us?
A study published in Animal Behavior revealed that body mass and metabolic rate determine how animals of different species perceive time.
According to the study, time perception depends on how quickly the animal’s nervous system processes sensory information. The more information the animal can process during a unit of time, the slower the time perceives.
The researchers exposed a group of different animals to light that flashed very quickly, to measure the speed at which the eyes could process the light.
Because of the tremendous speed of the flash, we humans will not distinguish the rapid and successive flashes of light, and will feel that it is a constant light, but what about animals?
According to what was reported in Science American, the researchers studied the brain activity of animals when exposed to this flashing light, and the surprise was that some animals were able to perceive and distinguish the flash of light even at high frequencies, in other words, they saw the light in a slow-motion system, or slow-motion, that means it feels the movement more precisely and in time more slowly than we do.
To simplify the picture, we will give you a more practical example. Have you ever watched the famous science fiction movie The Matrix? According to the Movie, Neo, the hero of the film, can dodge the fast bullets directed at him brilliantly, because he can sense time slower than those around him, and therefore the bullet will not surprise him and penetrate his body within moments but will move towards him very slowly so that he can dodge it skillfully, just as a fly does.
A slower sense of time saves the lives of small animals
In the aforementioned study, the scientists collected data from previous experiments on the rate at which 34 vertebrates process visual information, including lizards, birds, fish, and mammals.
They concluded that animals that can respond very quickly to visual stimuli are best able to evade predators.
In other words, the slower sense of time plays an important role in maintaining the life of these organisms.
The link between an animal’s structure and its sense of time
The graph of the previous study’s results revealed a pattern that showed a strong relationship between body size and how quickly the eye responded to changing visual information such as a flash of light.
According to the data collected, lightweight animals with fast metabolisms felt time slower than heavy animals with slower metabolisms.
For example, insects and small birds can see more information in one second than a larger animal such as an elephant.
Although flies, for example, have a very small brain, they can make good decisions very quickly due to their different sense of time.
Can humans develop a slower sense of time?
According to the BBC, there may be a difference in how time is sensed between members of the same species as well.
In humans, for example, experienced athletes can process visual information more quickly, so an experienced goalkeeper will be faster than others at observing the source of the ball.
The speed with which humans absorb visual information is also linked to age, says Andrew Jackson, co-author of the aforementioned study.
Younger people can react faster than older people, and this ability declines further with age.
