We humans like to think of ourselves as the pinnacle of evolution, but when it comes to
senses we’re actually inferior to a number of other animal species.
You’re watching Insane Curiosity at these are 10 strange senses that animals have and
humans don’t.
10.
Super smell Compared to nearly all other animal species,
humans have an extremely weak sense of smell.
So much so, that some animals could be said to possess a unique sense of super smell.
Scent hounds can smell one- to ten-million times more acutely than humans, and bloodhounds
have noses ten- to one-hundred-million times more sensitive than ours.
Bears have an even stronger sense of smell than dogs.
Black bears have been observed to travel up to 20 miles in a straight line to a food source,
grizzlies can find an elk carcass when it's underwater, and polar bears can smell a seal
through 3 feet of ice.
But not all animals use their nose for smelling.
Snakes have one of the most powerful mechanisms for smelling but it has nothing to do with
their nostrils.
Snakes use their nostrils solely for breathing, while smelling is achieved by sticking out
their tongues and using the damp surface to catch scent particles and carry them to a
special organ in the mouth called Jacobson's organ.
In other words, snakes smell by literally “tasting” the air with their tongues and
they’re doing a much better job than humans and their noses.
9.
Mechanoreception While most spiders have eight eyes, few of
them have good eyesight which means they have to rely on their other senses to get around.
One particularly well developed sense that helps spiders catch prey and escape dangerous
situations is called mechanoreception.
Mechanoreception refers to the process by which a mechanical stimulus is converted into
a nervous impulse.
The exoskeleton of spiders is covered in small receptor organs called slit sensilla which
respond to mechanical pressure.
These tiny sensory organs, which resemble the strings of a cord instrument, are super
sensitive to even the slightest pressure or vibration, which helps spiders catch their
prey at night.
Slit sensilla are so sensitive that they can respond to forces as small as 0.01 millinewtons,
which is less than half the body weight of a typical cockroach.
This means that spiders able to determine the size, weight, and even the type of insect
that gets caught in their webs without relying on their eyesight.
8.
Barometric pressure detection If you’re tired of misleading weather forecasts
on the news, just get yourself an aquarium and a couple of oriental weatherfish and you’ll
be able to predict an approaching storm before anyone else.
Oriental weatherfish, also known as pond loach, is a species of ray-finned fish native to
East Asia that has a unique ability to detect changes in barometric pressure.
A drop in barometric pressure causes a pressure change in the weatherfish’s swim bladder
- an internal gas-filled organ that helps fish control their buoyancy and maintain its
depth without floating upward or sinking.
Every time the barometric pressure falls, the weatherfish will become extremely agitated
and start swimming frantically in the hours before a storm.
Sometimes the fish will become so stressed that they will jump out of the aquarium!
Luckily, these remarkable fish can live up to three days out of a tank so if you ever
find you weatherfish on the floor one morning, put it back in the aquarium and the chances
are the fish will soon revive and make a full recovery.
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7.
Polarization vision Unlike humans who only have a marginal sensitivity
to polarized light, a number of other animal species have a heightened polarization sensitivity
which allows them to tell the orientation in which light waves are oscillating.
Insects such as bees, ants, and crickets have compound eyes that are composed of thousands
of "simple eyes".
Each of these smaller eyes has its own visual cells which are highly sensitive to polarized
light.
Not only does this allow insects like bees to perceive the light in dimensions unknown
to humans, it also gives them the ability to use the patterns of polarized light in
the sky as a compass.
Bees use polarization vision as a navigation system to locate directions and communicate
them to the colony, which essentially means that these hardworking creatures have a built-in
GPS system!
6.
Magnetoreception Magnetoreception, or the ability to detect
the Earth's magnetic field in order to perceive direction, altitude or location, is present
in several animal species but humans are not one of them.
Animals that possess a magnetic sense include worms, fruit flies, salamanders, frogs, birds,
mice, mole-rats, bats, red foxes, and some species of deer.
Magnetoreception was first discovered in migratory birds in 1966 by a German zoologist Wolfgang
Wiltschko.
Wiltschko conducted an experiment showing that even when migrating birds are locked
in a cage, they will assemble in the direction they want to migrate to.
While magnetoreception has been experimentally proven many times, scientists still don’t
know the exact biophysical mechanism that allows certain animal species to detect magnetic
fields.
Some researchers believe that magnetoreception is based on the magnetic mineral magnetite,
while others propose that protein cryptochrome plays a crucial role in the sensing of magnetic
fields.
While several hypotheses have been advanced to explain magnetoreception, this extraordinary
sensory phenomenon remains unexplained.
5.
Seismic communication While it may be true that humans are the only
species in the animal kingdom that possesses a true language, this doesn’t mean that
other animals don’t have their own complex ways of communicating.
While most animals communicate through some form of vocalization, there are also those
that use a process called seismic communication.
Seismic communication is based on the organism’s ability to detect mechanical vibrations underneath
the surface of the earth or a body of water.
Seismic communication has been reported in a wide variety of species, including mammals,
birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects, arachnids, crustaceans, and roundworms.
The most notable example of seismic communication is found in elephants.
When elephants produce low-pitch rumbles, the infrasound combines with the surface of
the earth to create vibrations that travel through the ground.
These vibrations can be detected by the skin of an elephant's feet and trunk which act
as resonant surfaces similar to the skin on a drum.
In this way, elephants are able to find distant potential mates and coordinate the movements
of entire social groups over great distances.
4.
Electroreception Electroreception is the unique ability of
marine animals to perceive natural electrical stimuli.
Animals such as sharks and rays have special electroreceptor organs that allow them to
locate objects around them by detecting distortions in electric fields.
Sharks are the most electrically sensitive animals on the planet, and can respond to
direct current fields as low as 5 nanovolts per centimeter.
These superpredators are equipped with special sensing organs called Ampullae of Lorenzini
which allow them to detect changes in electric fields emitted by other animals.
The Ampullae of Lorenzini are located in the shark’s snout and are made up of large pores
lined with sensory cells.
These cells detect even the weakest electrical impulses from the environment and transmit
the message to the sensory nerve at the base of each pore.
The nerve then sends messages directly to the shark’s brain to inform the animal of
nearby prey.
This incredible sixth sense allows sharks to discover prey that is hidden behind rocks
or buried under sand just by sensing the natural electrical signals emitted by all animals.
3.
Super vision Many animal species have superior vision to
humans, but there’s one strange creature that sees the world in such a unique way that
no other animal’s visual system can even compare.
Meet the mantis shrimp.
Mantis shrimps are colorful marine crustaceans that inhabit the tropical and subtropical
waters in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
These creatures have one of the most complex visual systems ever discovered in the animal
kingdom.
While humans have three types of color-receptive cones in their eyes, the eyes of a mantis
shrimp have 16 different photoreceptor pigments!
Each compound eye is divided into three regions which enables mantis shrimp to see objects
with three parts of the same eye.
Mantis shrimps also have UV vision that can detect five different frequency bands in the
deep ultraviolet.
But that’s not it: mantis shrimps can also tune the sensitivity of their long-wavelength
vision to adapt to their environment.
This phenomenon, known as "spectral tuning", adds yet another dimension to the way these
creatures see the outside world.
The eyes of the mantis shrimp are so complex that despite decades of research scientist
are still trying to figure how they work and why they evolved that way in the first place.
2.
Infrared sensing In addition to being the only known mammals
whose entire nutrition relies on blood, vampire bats are also unique in their ability to see
in infrared.
These flying mammals have special infrared-sensitive receptors on their nose that help them prey
on warm-blooded animals.
These receptors are equipped with nerve fibers that detect infrared thermal radiation emitted
by their prey.
The upper lips of vampire bats are covered with a specific form of the heat-detecting
molecule called TRPV1.
While this molecule normally helps other animals detect temperatures above 43°C, in vampire
bats the threshold is reduced to around 30°C, which allows them to detect the veins on a
pray from 20 cm away.
Together with three species of snake – pythons, boas and pit vipers – vampire bats are the
only known vertebrates with the ability to see infrared.
1.
Echolocation The number one on our list of 10 most fascinating
animal senses is echolocation.
Echolocation refers to the ability of some animals to emit calls out to the environment
and listen to the echoes of those calls to locate and identify other objects.
While several animal species are capable of echolocation, the most notable example of
this incredible sixth sense is found in toothed whales, a suborder of cetaceans which includes
dolphins and killer whales.
These majestic creatures produce a variety of sounds — many of which are imperceptible
to human ears.
These sounds are then echoed back from objects and conducted to the middle ear of the animal.
Toothed whales use echolocation to collect information about the seafloor, the shorelines,
underwater obstacles, water depth, and the presence of other animals underwater.
Recent research even suggests that these whales sometimes use very high intensity sounds to
disorient their prey when hunting.
Since echolocation is an extremely sensitive and highly developed, scientists believe it
may provide toothed whales with a three dimensional picture of the world.
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