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
Try this experiment next time you see a fly. Instead of swatting it….get your fingers prepped to flick it in the face. Then move your hand as slow as you can towards fly. If you are slow enough it will not react and you can spaff it right between the eyes.
My theory is that they perceive things to be moving slowly. A fast moving swat they see it coming. An object moving towards them slowly enough, they perceive it as stationary. Boom in your face fly.
How much thought do people put into walking?
You should really check out a youtube video called:
How The World SOUNDS To Animals by Benn Jordan.
It covers this well.
Plenty of animals have faster reaction times. This is probably what you mean.
If you truly meant “think”, there’s no answer to this question, b/c 1) we don’t even know how humans think, and 2) we know even less well how animals “think” unless we’re talking about *C. neo* or something equally simple.
Along with some things others have said said there is also something called flicker fusion rate, which is how quickly something can process visual information. Some animals like birds and insects will have a much higher rate than humans.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flicker_fusion_threshold
Personally, it seems to me it is just that their whole system ( nervious, musculature, etc) are specifically wired to react like that…
They evolved to be that way, as faster responses resulted in higher likelihood of survival.
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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.”
Birds and squirrels do indeed have faster reaction times than humans, but it’s not because they think faster. Their nervous systems are adapted for quick responses, essential for survival in their environments. Birds, for instance, have a higher metabolic rate and a more efficient neural network, allowing for rapid processing of visual information. This is crucial for navigating complex environments at high speeds.
Squirrels, on the other hand, have specialized proprioceptors (sensors that detect body position) and a highly developed cerebellum, the part of the brain responsible for motor control. This allows them to make split-second adjustments while moving at high speeds. It’s less about ‘thinking’ and more about evolved reflexes and specialized neural pathways.
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Humans are geared for dexterity, that means fine motor control that allows us to do things a bird can’t, like thread a needle with our fingers.
The brain and nervous system are an odd machine due to evolution adding layer upon layer of circuits to try to improve the old stuff, without removing the old stuff. So, instead of having a simple circuit that let’s you thread needles, what you have is a bunch of circuits that want to twitch your fingers fast, like a bird, and a bunch more circuits on top of those that are countering them to slow your motions down and let you control them. The result is fine motor control, but at the cost of slowed reaction times.
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