[HN Gopher] Ultra-Rapid Vision in Birds
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       Ultra-Rapid Vision in Birds
        
       Author : downboots
       Score  : 36 points
       Date   : 2025-07-27 16:32 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (journals.plos.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (journals.plos.org)
        
       | yrcyrc wrote:
       | Echoing to this perhaps, I heard birds can react 13 times faster
       | than we do, which is especially useful in flight with hundreds or
       | thousands of other birds.
        
         | stronglikedan wrote:
         | you should see the reaction time of the fly that's been in my
         | house for days now
        
         | user____name wrote:
         | Yes, smaller animals, faster heartrate, more direct wiring,
         | they probably experience time different than we do.
         | 
         | Many human responses are purely unconcious muscle memory due to
         | nervous system latency, this also implies the brain has evolved
         | to be highly predictive as to compensate.
        
       | modeless wrote:
       | Hmm. It is possible to distinguish flickering lights at much
       | higher than the flicker fusion threshold by using eye motion or
       | other types of fast motion. A constant light will produce a
       | smooth blur under motion while a flickering light will produce
       | many distinct images. It seems like they don't have a way of
       | checking whether the birds are using motion to distinguish the
       | flickering light or not.
        
         | amluto wrote:
         | I would go one step farther: I bet that plenty of humans could
         | pass the test that the birds were subjected to at 120Hz or even
         | higher. They didn't test whether the birds could actually
         | resolve stimuli at high temporal resolution -- they tested
         | whether the birds could detect flicker. A bright source pulsed
         | at 120Hz is easily perceptible (and incredibly annoying),
         | especially if it's a square wave with a duty cycle that isn't
         | especially high.
         | 
         | Where are the control animals?
        
           | modeless wrote:
           | I don't think it's true that 120 Hz flicker is easily
           | perceptible, absent motion. Flicker fusion is real. But
           | motion is common, so that's why humans in practice can detect
           | 120 Hz flicker (and find it annoying. Ban PWM taillights).
        
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