It always amazes me how small birds change direction mid-flight and seem to do it frequently, being able to make tons of movements in small urban areas with lots of obstacles.
Same thing with squirrels – they move so fast and seem to be able to make a hundred movements in the time a human could be able to make ten!
So what’s going on here? Do some animals just THINK faster than humans, and not only move faster than them?
In: Biology
It depends on your interpretation of the word “Faster”.
The electrical signals that are sent between neurons, and the signals sent from your extremities to the brain are likely just as fast in humans as they are in any other animal. However reaction time goes beyond just this initial signal.
You can imagine a boxer training to react quickly to their opponents movements. The boxer repeats the same motion over and over and over again to strengthen certain neural connections as much as possible. By optimizing their neural pathways, they inevitably reduce their reaction time, thereby seeming to “think faster”.
Similarly, birds and rodents have highly optimized neural pathways that allow them to make fast decisions. These decisions are hardwired in their brains from evolution and from learnt behavior.
However, since these decisions are so specialized, they are normally narrow in scope. In other words, if you put a rodent in water they wouldn’t be able to react as quickly as a fish, since it’s a new and unknown environment.
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