Time in Slow Motion

“Perception is reality.” -Lee Atwater

A fly lands on your arm. You swat it away, but it masterfully evades your hand and positions itself by your ear. You duck and dodge, but to no avail, the fly maneuvers around your flailing body, landing once more on your arm.

You have no chance as the human. Flies evolved to have highly sophisticated eyesight to empower them with this speed and agility. The fly, in fact, has drastically quicker sight than humans, perceiving the world at a faster rate. But what does this quicker vision really mean?

Temporal Perception

“Senses that seem paranormal to us only appear this way because we are so limited and so painfully unaware of our limitations.”

-Ed Young

When walking through a lighted city at night, we are blissfully unaware of the storm of light around us. LEDs work by flickering at a rate quicker than the human eye can perceive, at approximately 100Hz (humans see at about 60Hz). However, for the birds flying overhead, who see on average at over 100Hz, the city is a flurry of blinking lights. This causes confusion and disorientation to the birds, losing sense of their migratory paths, causing seizures, and can often be fatal. Imagine how you’d be living under a strobe light!