[SR] Born with that extra something

This post will look at the extra or enhanced senses that some animals have developed to adapt to its environment.

Enhanced Sight

Now, when you first saw the heading, you must have been like, well he would obviously talk about the bald eagle. Well that is just too mainstream. I will talk about a lesser known creature. The Mantis Shrimp.

It is believed to possess the most complex eyes in the entire animal kingdom.
I'm sure you all know about the visible spectrum of light. What we can see, is just a small fraction of electromagnetic radiation.

But what the mantis shrimp is amazing. It can see everything from Ultraviolet to infrared light and even polarized light! 

So let's first discuss how they can use their ultraviolet sight. Well what ultraviolet allows you to do is to analyse the history of an object. Like knowing that dinosaur bones are hollow and that ancient Greek statues were actually painted just by looking at it. Seeing infrared light can allow it to see an invisible laser alarm system, read data of a Blu-ray disc, and see how hot or cold something is.

So, why do they get awesome eyesight and I don't???

They prey on animals that or often semi transparent or transparent, so they need to be able to sense different types of radiation to find their prey. Also because they hunt using very rapid movement of their claws, they require very accurate ranging information which would require very accurate depth perception.

Internal GPS

The monarch butterfly's migration in North America every spring looks like the sort of poorly planned, uncoordinated mass migrations you expect from the Animal Kingdom, with hundreds of millions spreading out across North America. In August, they fly back South. But here's where things get spooky. All hundred million of them fly back to the same patch of trees in Mexico, that patch of trees is the 1/100th the size of New York's Central Park.

But here is when it really gets creepy till the point that science cannot explain. These migrations take place over a year. The butterflies live for only a few months. That means the migrations span generations. Every August, hundred of millions of butterflies stretch out from their pupae and begin to fly to the exact patch of trees that their great-grandfathers left a year ago. Right of the bat when they are born, they already know how to fly to the home of their great-grandfather without their mothers telling them how, or without knowing who their great-grandfather is, or even without knowing what a great-grandfather is because obviously they are butterflies and could not possibly have known. Allow me to emphasize their achievement. We can only return to our own home from an unknown location through the help of a GPS. They do that without even knowing where home is. 

So why do thy get an internal GPS and I don't?

Well, perhaps its because we got the bigger brain and could learn how to make one. Nature just loves making our lives difficult. Maybe that's why humans are taking revenge on it through deforestation and releasing carbon emissions and extensive hunting and killing and forcing species into extinction. Maybe.

Just kidding. Seriously, Global Warming is bad and it needs to stop now.

Echolocation

Echolocation is essentially biological sonar. Animals that can echolocate emit calls to their environment, and listen to the echos of those calls that return from various objects that use them. They use these calls to locate and identify the objects. There are many animals that can echolocate like bats being most notable, but I would like to do my case study on dolphins because they just look a lot cuter.

I mean seriously. What kind of coldblooded creature must you be
to not want to give this guy a big hug. 

Dolphins use echolocation to navigate their way around the sea as well as for hunting prey. Dolphins live in the sea so their visibility is very limited and furthermore, sound travels faster in water. echolocation is very favourable in the sea. They emit a focused beam of  high frequency clicks in the direction their head is pointing.

Sounds are generated by passing air from the bony nares through the phonic lips. The focused beam is modulated by a large fatty organ known as the 'melon'. This acts like an acoustic lens because it is composed of lipids of differing densities.

Dolphins use clicks in a series. Echolocation literally sonar, using sounds made by the animal itself. Ranging is done by measuring the time delay between the animal's own sound emission and any echoes that return from the environment. Animal echolocation has only one transmitter and two receivers which are the ears. Echolocating animals have two ears positioned slightly apart. The echoes returning to the two ears arrive at different times and at different loudness levels, depending on the position of the object generating the echoes. The time and loudness differences are used by the animals to perceive distance and direction. With echolocation, the bat or other animal can see not only where it is going but also how big another animal is, what kind of animal it is, and other features.

Electroreception

Sharks are able to "sense" electricity. My case study is he Hamerhead Shark, which just so happens to also have enhanced smell, and better vision than most sharks, having 360 degrees of vertical binocular vision.

Nobody told me I had 360 degrees vertical binocular vision?!?!?!

But obviously, their most impressive ability is the ability to use their hammer head as a natural minesweeper, detecting the minutest electrical signal over vast distances or through mud. All sharks have receptors called ampullae of Lorenzini, which actually sounds more like a pasta dish than a super-sensory organ. Hammerheads just have more of them, and they are spread out over that giant head, giving them something similar to an electrical signal detecting radar array on their face.

As a result, hammerheads can detect half a billionth of a volt. For some perspective, when you drive around in your car on a dry day, then get out and zap yourself on the door handle, that's because your body built up about 8,000 to 10,000 volts of static. That is more than a trillion times the voltage needed for a hammerhead to find you, even if you are hiding in an underground bunker at the bottom of the goddamn ocean. Because of this, hammerheads are able to easily find just about anything on the bottom of the ocean that tries to hide from them.

Yeah, I think its time we all spend a moment to be thankful of the fact that we live on land, not in the sea, because it seems like a pretty messed up world to live in.
The Mantis Shrimp's punch is delivered at 50mph and keep in mind that the shrimp is doing this underwater. Think back to the last time you were at the pool and you tried to no avail  to run through it and ended up stupidly flailing you arms and legs in slow motion. In fact, it is known to break aquarium glass.

The dolphin can blast soundwaves at you and estimate how you look like, where you might swim to in the next minute and where you are with pinpoint accuracy. Even when you hide in the seabed, the hammerhead can find you, and gobble you up for dinner. 

HA! Made this myself :)