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    Slo-Mo Mojo - The Economist

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    The document summarizes a study that investigated how animals perceive the passage of time based on their metabolism and size. The study found that smaller, faster-metabolizing animals like flies likely experience time more slowly due to having a higher critical flicker fusion frequency (CFF). A higher CFF allows animals to process visual information faster. The study showed correlations between smaller size, higher metabolism, and higher CFF across various vertebrate species. This suggests evolution has pushed animals to perceive the world in the slowest motion possible given their physical constraints.

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    Slo-Mo Mojo - The Economist

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    The document summarizes a study that investigated how animals perceive the passage of time based on their metabolism and size. The study found that smaller, faster-metabolizing animals like flies likely experience time more slowly due to having a higher critical flicker fusion frequency (CFF). A higher CFF allows animals to process visual information faster. The study showed correlations between smaller size, higher metabolism, and higher CFF across various vertebrate species. This suggests evolution has pushed animals to perceive the world in the slowest motion possible given their physical constraints.

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    Slo-mo Mojo | the Economist

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    The document summarizes a study that investigated how animals perceive the passage of time based on their metabolism and size. The study found that smaller, faster-metabolizing animals like flies likely experience time more slowly due to having a higher critical flicker fusion frequency (CFF). A higher CFF allows animals to process visual information faster. The study showed correlations between smaller size, higher metabolism, and higher CFF across various vertebrate species. This suggests evolution has pushed animals to perceive the world in the slowest motion possible given their physical constraints.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    8 views7 pages

    Slo-Mo Mojo - The Economist

    Uploaded by

    scribdaue
    The document summarizes a study that investigated how animals perceive the passage of time based on their metabolism and size. The study found that smaller, faster-metabolizing animals like flies likely experience time more slowly due to having a higher critical flicker fusion frequency (CFF). A higher CFF allows animals to process visual information faster. The study showed correlations between smaller size, higher metabolism, and higher CFF across various vertebrate species. This suggests evolution has pushed animals to perceive the world in the slowest motion possible given their physical constraints.

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    Menu My Economist

    Science & technology | How animals perceive time

    Slo-mo mojo
    Small creatures with fast metabolisms see the world like an action
    replay

    Sep 21st 2013 Save Share Give

    FLIES live shorter lives than elephants. Of that there is no doubt. But
    from a !y’s point of view, does its life actually seem that much shorter?
    This, in essence, was the question
    Download asked
    The by Kevin Healy
    Economist app of Trinity
    College, Dublin, in a paperfor
    just published
    the in Animal
    best reading Behaviour. His
    experience

    answer is, possibly not.


    Subjective experience of time is just that—subjective. Even individual
    people, who can compare notes by talking to one another, cannot know
    for certain that their own experience coincides with that of others. But
    an objective measure which probably correlates with subjective
    experience does exist. It is called the critical !icker-fusion frequency,
    or CFF, and it is the lowest frequency at which a !ickering light appears
    to be a constant source of illumination. It measures, in other words,
    how fast an animal’s eyes can refresh an image and thus process
    information.

    ADVERTISEMENT

    For people, the average CFF is 60 hertz (ie, 60 times a second). This is
    why the refresh-rate on a television screen is usually set at that value.
    Dogs have a CFF of 80Hz, which is probably why they do not seem to
    like watching television. To a dog a TV programme looks like a series of
    rapidly changing stills.

    Having the highest possible CFF would carry biological advantages,


    because it would allow faster reaction to threats and opportunities.

    Flies, which have a CFF of 250Hz, are notoriously di"cult to swat. A


    rolled up newspaper that seems to a human to be moving rapidly
    rolled up newspaper that seems to a human to be moving rapidly
    appears to them to be travelling through treacle.
    Mr Healy reasoned that the main constraints on an animal’s CFF are its
    size and its metabolic rate. Being small means signals have less far to
    travel in the brain. A high metabolic rate means more energy is
    available to process them. A literature search, however, showed that no
    one had previously looked into the question.

    Fortunately for Mr Healy, this search also showed that plenty of people
    had looked at CFF in lots of species for other reasons. Similarly, many
    other people had looked at the metabolic rates of many of the same
    species. And size data for species are ubiquitous. All he had to do,
    therefore, was correlate and repurpose these results. Which he did.

    To simplify matters he looked only at vertebrates—34 species of them.


    At the bottom end of the scale was the European eel, with a CFF of
    14Hz. It was closely followed by the leatherback turtle, at 15Hz.
    Tuataras clocked in at 46Hz. Hammerhead sharks tied with humans, at
    60Hz, and yellow#n tuna tied with dogs at 80Hz. The top spot was
    occupied by the golden-mantled ground squirrel, at 120Hz. And when
    Mr Healy plotted his accumulated CFF data against both size and
    metabolic rate (which are not, it must be admitted, independent
    variables, as small animals tend to have higher metabolic rates than
    large ones), he found exactly the correlations he had predicted.

    The upshot is that his hypothesis—that evolution pushes animals to


    see the world in the slowest motion possible—looks correct. Flies may
    seem short-lived to people, but from a dipteran point of view they can
    thus live to a ripe old age. Remember that next time you try (and fail) to
    swat one.

    This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline "Slo-
    mo mojo"

    Science & technology


    Science & technology
    September 21st 2013

    → The devil and the details

    → Slo-mo mojo

    → It’s not rocket science

    → Life in the labyrinth

    From the September 21st


    2013 edition
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    and more in the list of contents

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