For example, how did scientists discover that bees can see in ultraviolet or octopus can see polarized light? And elephants can hear infra-sounds?
In: Biology
I’ve worked on mice, who can hear frequencies higher than our hearing range. I could record the brain activity when I played a tone to them. There were tones that I would not be able to hear, but their brain could reliably pick it up.
I think the examples you gave are largely observational (I don’t think anyone is cutting open an elephant brain and playing different noises to them). I would imagine elephants were recorded and when analyzing what the microphones picked up, they found sounds at very low frequencies that the elephants were clearly responding to. Bees if I remember correctly use the sun’s location to communicate where food is. I believe they may have attempted to recreate this using various light sources to determine which ones the bees where actually tracking as the signal.
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