I’ve seen so many videos where animals have(seemingly) instant reaction time and can escape fast from predators, how is it possible and why humans don’t have same reaction time?
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Have you ever had a jump scare?
We live in curated environments that are normally safe. We are rarely on our guard. But when we get a jump scare, our body has a very quick reaction.
Wild animals are always on their guard.
The same reason the internet is faster in small countries than large ones.
Light goes into the eye, processed by the eye, generate a reaction, send that signal to the muscle.
All that is an actual physical process happening. And like all physical processes it takes time. The signal has to travel the further it travels the longer the reaction.
Humans reaction times are the same as animals of a similar size, whole faster reacting animals are much smaller.
Humans have the same instant reaction. We might not have it for as many situations.
The best example I can now think of is closing your eyes because something you haven’t seen (processed) yet will hit you in the eye.
In addition to all the biology and evolution responses, the reality is that humans do have incredibly fast reaction times. It’s just that the vast majority of humans don’t practice them, and those that do practice them in very specific ways.
Fencers react to their opponents so quickly that cameras couldn’t keep up until the past few decades. StarCraft players have hundreds of actions per minute. Boxers can hit bags most people can’t track moving.
But most people don’t do anything which requires fast reaction times. Even with driving the difference between a tenth second and a quarter second reaction is generally negligible. And watching tv and filling out tps reports don’t require any reaction speed.
Why is your new 2023 computer running an app on Windows so much slower than a 1990 computer running MSDOS command prompt?
Because it goes through so many layers of software to give you the GUI interface.
Human brains have more layers of software to compute more complex concepts. Except when it’s really important to do things fast like reacting to a snake. Recognizing and reacting to a snake is the function of the amygdala which is the reptilian Brain inside of our brain. It is really fast at recognizing things and instructing muscles to react. You might feel that you are reacting to a snake “faster than you can think”.
The amygdala is also very poor at recognizing things. You will do a snake reaction to a stick or a hose pipe or a shadow. This is because the penalty of reacting to a stick as if it was a snake is small but the penalty of not reacting to a snake and thinking it’s a stick is high.
Invoking a more complex more accurate image recognition system would slow down the reaction time. It adds a layer of software.
So a TL;Dr to this would be:
Organisms experience time differently. A fly experiences time much slower than us, meaning they can process more information at a shorter time.
If you had ever that feeling, that everything was moving in slow motion or how everything felt super sped up, this is how other animals experience time constantly. Turtles have an even sicker skill: their perception of time on land differs from their time perception in water.
So if you want to catch a fly, don’t move quickly and sudden. Move slowly. The slower time perception of the fly will make your hand appear to be almost stationary, allowing you to simply grab it.
In other words: other animals perceive more time per time
Imagine that it’s not just legal, but normal for people to kill other people when they got hungry. My head would be on a swivel, I’d be super paranoid, and my reflexes would be WAY better than they currently are.
It’s like playing dodgeball but you’re playing with your life, if you get hit, you’re dead. You’ve been playing long enough and seen your friends get hit, so you’ve become hyper attuned to the constant danger of a ball being launched your way and learned to react at the first signs of danger. Play this game long enough, and keep passing down your survival instincts for many generations, and eventually you have some hyper alert dodgeball players.
Humans are apex predators, so our survival instinct (from constant immediate danger) is pretty dull from generations of living in relative safety. Wild animals, however, don’t have this luxury and are constantly in a game of “dodgeball”, even when getting a drink of water. Survival of the fittest applies here, if they weren’t quick enough to dodge the attack, they lose. Only the ones with the fastest reaction time survive, sometimes.
Our brains can react like theirs, we’d just need to remove some stuff to make it do it. See the advanced parts of our brains (the parts other animals don’t have) work kinda like Broly’s necklace and hand band for the rest of our brain so that it has less power over our actions…like how the necklace and head band limit Broly from unleashing his true power and going completely *animal*. This is called an inhibitory system, one thing inhibits or stops another.
For example, you see your friend walk up to you, and he has this annoying habit of pretending he’s gonna flick you in the eye (he’s not your favorite friend), you always flinched at first, but after enough instances you stop flinching. You flinched because that’s your body reacting to the stimulus of something getting close to your eyes. Your body wants to protect your eyes, they’re important. When you know he’s not flicking you, you know you’re not in danger. there’s no reason to move. By not moving, you *actively* didn’t *(re)act.*
Many lesser animal’s brains do not have those inhibitory functions, because they haven’t evolved far enough along yet, while others are there but limited in capacity. Stimulus causes (re)action…again, for the most part.
I’m not sure this is true for those of us who have trained certain reactions / responses.
In my time I have been known to have extremely fast reflexes. Likewise, I know that some operators develop the live-or-die(-or-kill) reflexes you are speaking of.
Many humans living comfortable lives have not had to practice nor perform the skillsets you are writing of, where-as the animals you may be writing about had to practice it from early in their lives. The ones who were bad at it became another animal’s meal.
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