These are the organs of vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, consisting of sensitive (receptive) nerve cells and auxiliary structures. Perceiving and initially analyzing various irritations received by the body from external and internal environment, the sense organs transmit this information to the brain, where a corresponding sensation arises - visual, auditory, etc.
The sense organs of animals are divided into distant, capable of perceiving stimuli at a distance (vision, hearing, smell), and contact (touch, taste). Numerous stimuli are sent to the brain by receptors located in muscles, tendons, ligaments and on the articular surfaces of bones.
Each sense organ has its own specific stimulus: sound waves- for the organ of hearing, light - for the organ of vision, etc. With the help of their sense organs, animals learn external world. Every sensation is the result of the influence of the surrounding world on the senses.
The functions of the sense organs are closely related to the activities of the whole organism. For example, irritation of the olfactory receptors with pleasant odors causes a decrease in blood pressure, improved hearing and vision, and unpleasant - the opposite phenomenon. Irritation of the receptors of the taste analyzer activates the activity of many glands of the digestive tract and affects metabolism and muscle activity. Important role The sense of smell plays a role in the life of animals. With its help, for example, an animal searches for and obtains food and determines whether it is edible.
The most advanced sense organ in farm animals is the eyes. With the help of vision, animals perceive the illumination of objects, their color and shape, size and distance at which objects are removed from the animal.
However color vision not common to all animals. For example, rabbits are color blind.
“Qualities exist only insofar as it is customary to consider sweet as sweet, bitter as bitter, hot as hot, and color as colorful. however, only atoms and emptiness really exist.” Democritus, 460-370. BC. "Tetralogies"
Night vision. Huge eyes slender loris help him navigate, moving in complete darkness through the night forest. Lorises are nocturnal animals and rely primarily on their sense of smell to find prey. They use scent marks and sounds to transmit information to relatives.
Scout eye. Our knowledge of the nature of light suggests that the eyes of a horsefly cannot discern fine details, but since the workings of the brain are not well understood, we cannot reproduce what this fly sees.
Animals' sense organs are not like humans'. Some animals see light that is invisible to us. Others hear sounds that our ears cannot perceive. Some animals are sensitive to magnetic field Earth and to the electric field. Dolphins reproduce a three-dimensional picture of the world around them, much more detailed than a person sees, but at the same time they use echolocators that catch reflections of the sounds they make. The picture of “atoms and void” that a dolphin creates by converting reflected echoes is almost certainly very different from the one we create with our eyes and brain. We will probably never be able to experience the world the way a dolphin sees it, but by studying the behavior of animals, we can find out what stimuli they react to and how their senses help them survive. Democritus would be surprised at such modest progress in the study of animal life.
Hunting by ear. This bat- horseshoe bat - while hunting it makes sounds that, reflected from flying insects, help it determine their location. One sound repeated 10 times per second allows the mouse to detect the insect. “When it comes to the victim,” it makes a glissando - a sequence of merging sounds, which helps to make an accurate throw.
Snake sense organs. Gaboon viper, or cassava, “sees” in the dark, detecting changes in temperature using temperature sensors in the pits on the face. The ears only perceive low frequencies. The organ of smell is the forked tongue, with which the snake “tastes” the air.
Only smell and touch. U starfish there are no eyes or ears; crawling along the seabed in search of food, they rely on touch and smell.
Bone dome. The beluga whale's domed skull is part of its echolocation transmission system, serving as a lens that focuses sounds into a narrow beam.
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The only way to understand the world is through our senses. Therefore, the senses are the basis for understanding what is happening around us. It is commonly believed that we have five senses, but in reality there are at least nine, and perhaps more, depending on what we mean by the word “sense.”
But, be that as it may, the animal world in this regard is ready to put any of us to shame. Some animals have abilities that are also inherent in humans, but in animals they are much more developed, and therefore we perceive the reality around us completely differently.
1. Electronic beak
At first, the description of the platypus, a mammal with a duck's beak that hatches eggs, was perceived as a practical joke. Well, what's the point of a ridiculous duck beak?
The platypus feeds on small invertebrates that live at the bottom of rivers and lakes. When he dives, his eyes, nostrils and ears are completely closed to prevent water from entering. The beak of the platypus is literally stuffed with sensitive sensors that can detect even the weakest electric fields that arise during the movement of living organisms.
Along with detecting electric fields, the platypus's beak is also very sensitive to disturbances that occur in the water column. These two senses, electroreception and mechanoreception, allow the platypus to determine the location of its prey with amazing accuracy.
2. Echolocation
Bats are traditionally considered blind compared to ordinary animals. If the eyes of a bat are much smaller than those of other predators, and not nearly as sharp, it is only because these mammals have developed the ability to hunt using sound.
Echolocation bats lies in the ability to use high-frequency sound pulses and the ability to capture the reflected signal, by which they estimate the distance and direction to the objects around them. At the same time, when calculating the speed of insects, they evaluate their prey not only by the time spent passing the impulse back and forth, but also take into account the Doppler effect.
Being nocturnal animals and hunting mainly small insects, bats require abilities that do not depend on light. Humans have a weak, rudimentary form of this sense (we can tell which direction a sound is coming from), but some individuals develop this ability into true echolocation.
3. Infrared vision
When police are chasing criminals at night, or rescuers are searching for people under rubble, they often resort to using infrared imaging devices. A significant part of the thermal radiation of objects when room temperature displayed in the infrared spectrum, which can be used to assess surrounding objects based on their temperature.
Some species of snakes that hunt warm-blooded animals have special indentations on their heads that allow them to capture infrared radiation. Even after being blinded, the snake can continue to hunt unerringly using its infrared vision. It is noteworthy that at the molecular level, the snake's infrared vision is completely unrelated to ordinary vision in the visible spectrum, and must develop separately.
4. Ultraviolet
Many people would agree that plants are beautiful. However, while plants are just decoration for us, they are vital not only to themselves, but also to the insects that feed on them. Flowers that are pollinated by insects have an interest in attracting these insects and helping them find the right path. For bees appearance a flower can mean much more than the human eye can see.
So, if you look at a flower in the ultraviolet spectrum, you can see hidden patterns designed to point bees in the right direction.
Bees see the world completely differently from us. Unlike us, they distinguish several spectra of visible light (blue and green), and have special groups of cells for capturing ultraviolet light. A botany professor once said, “Plants use colors like whores use lipstick when they want to attract a client.”
5. Magnetism
Bees also have a second sensual trick hidden up their furry little sleeves. For a bee, finding the hive at the end of a day of continuous flight is a matter of life and death. For the hive, in turn, it is very important that the bee remembers where the food source is and can find its way to it. But despite the fact that bees can do a lot, they can hardly be called incredibly gifted mental abilities.
To navigate, they must use a large amount of different information, including sources hidden in their own abdominal cavity. The smallest ring of magnetic particles, magnetic iron granules, hidden in a bee’s belly, allow it to navigate in the Earth’s magnetic field and determine its location.
6. Polarization
When light waves oscillate in one direction, it is called polarization. Humans cannot detect the polarization of light without the help of special equipment because the light-sensitive cells in our eyes are arranged randomly (unevenly). In an octopus, these cells are ordered. And the more evenly the cells are located, the brighter the polarized light.
How does this allow the octopus to hunt? One of best forms camouflage - to be transparent, and great amount sea creatures practically invisible. However, polarization of light occurs under the water column, and some octopuses take advantage of this. When such light passes through the body of a transparent animal, its polarization changes, the octopus notices this and grabs the prey.
7. Sensitive shell
Humans have the ability to feel through their skin because there are sensory cells all over its surface. If you wear protective suit, you will lose most sensitivity. This may cause a lot of inconvenience for you, but for a hunting spider it would be a real disaster.
Pacu, like other arthropods, have a strong exoskeleton that protects their body. But how, in this case, do they feel what they touch, how do they move without feeling the surface with their feet? The fact is that their exoskeleton has tiny holes, the deformation of which makes it possible to determine the force and pressure exerted on the shell. This gives spiders the opportunity to sense the world around them as strongly as possible.
8. Taste sensations
In most communities, it is customary to keep your mouth shut. Unfortunately, this is not possible for catfish, because its entire body, in fact, is a solid tongue covered with taste sensory cells. More than 175 thousand of these cells allow you to feel the entire spectrum of flavors passing through them.
The ability to capture the subtlest taste nuances gives these fish the opportunity not only to sense the presence of prey at a considerable distance, but also to accurately determine its location, and this all happens in a very muddy water- the typical habitat of catfish.
9. Blind light
Many organisms that have evolved in dark environments have only rudimentary, vestigial vision, or even no eyes at all. In any pitch-black cave, being able to see is of no use.
The cave fish “Astyanax mexicanus” has completely lost its eyes, but in return nature has given it the ability to detect even the faintest changes in light that can be found under the rocky layer. This ability allows the fish to hide from predators, since a special pineal gland detects light (and at the same time is responsible for the sense of day and night).
These fish have a translucent body, allowing light to pass directly through the pineal gland without obstruction, which helps them find shelter.
10. Spot Matrix Vision
In living nature we can find a stunning variety of shapes and types of eyes. Most consist of lenses that focus light onto light-sensitive cells (the retina) that project images of the world around us. To focus an image correctly, lenses can change shape like a human's, move back and forth like an octopus's, and a myriad of other ways.
For example, a representative of the crustacean species “Copilia quadrata” uses an unusual method to display the surrounding world. This crustacean uses two fixed lenses and a movable sensitive light spot. By moving the sensitive detector, Copilia builds perceives the image as a series of numbered dots, each of which is located in its place depending on the intensity of the light.
“Qualities exist only insofar as it is customary to consider sweet as sweet, bitter as bitter, hot as hot, and color as colorful. however, only atoms and emptiness really exist.” Democritus, 460-370. BC. "Tetralogies"
Night vision. The huge eyes of the slender loris help him navigate, moving in complete darkness through the night forest. Lorises are nocturnal animals and rely primarily on their sense of smell to find prey. They use scent marks and sounds to transmit information to relatives.
Scout eye. Our knowledge of the nature of light suggests that the eyes of a horsefly cannot discern fine details, but since the workings of the brain are not well understood, we cannot reproduce what this fly sees.
Animals' sense organs are not like humans'. Some animals see light that is invisible to us. Others hear sounds that our ears cannot perceive. Some animals are sensitive to the Earth's magnetic field and electric field. Dolphins reproduce a three-dimensional picture of the world around them, much more detailed than a person sees, but at the same time they use echolocators that catch reflections of the sounds they make. The picture of “atoms and void” that a dolphin creates by converting reflected echoes is almost certainly very different from the one we create with our eyes and brain. We will probably never be able to experience the world the way a dolphin sees it, but by studying the behavior of animals, we can find out what stimuli they react to and how their senses help them survive. Democritus would be surprised at such modest progress in the study of animal life.
Hunting by ear. This bat - the horseshoe bat - makes sounds during the hunt, which, reflected from flying insects, help it determine their location. One sound repeated 10 times per second allows the mouse to detect the insect. “When it comes to the victim,” it makes a glissando - a sequence of merging sounds, which helps to make an accurate throw.
Snake sense organs. The Gaboon viper, or cassava, “sees” in the dark by detecting changes in temperature using temperature sensors in the pits on its face. The ears perceive only low frequencies. The organ of smell is the forked tongue, with which the snake “tastes” the air.
Only smell and touch. Starfish have neither eyes nor ears; crawling along the seabed in search of food, they rely on touch and smell.
Bone dome. The beluga whale's domed skull is part of its echolocation transmission system, serving as a lens that focuses sounds into a narrow beam.
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