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
A 2013 study of starlings ([https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/how-do-starling-flocks-create-those-mesmerizing-murmurations/#](https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/how-do-starling-flocks-create-those-mesmerizing-murmurations/#))
found they reacted to just the 7 birds around them. When we see mumurations of thousands of birds, each one is just reacting to the closest 7. Not that impressive, really. As mentioned already, small creatures tend to experience time more slowly than humans and thus appear to react faster, relative to us. It has to do with neurology. Google anything about animal or insect “sense of time” and you’ll find lots of info on “critical flicker fusion frequency (CFF), which is the frequency at which flickering light can be perceived as continuous.”
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