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Image: LiveScience |
If you want to sneak up on an animal, it might be better to ride a bike slowly rather than tiptoe. This is the technique that the young daughter of psychologist Niko Troje used while stalking wild rabbits near their home. However, both the girl and Troje did not understand why riding a bike was less alarming to the rabbits.
In a new study, Troje and colleagues at Queen’s University investigated how humans detect and interpret movements to infer the presence of animals.
They recorded videos of cats, pigeons, and humans, focusing on specific movements. When watching the digitized footage, people could easily recognize the size of the animal and its direction.
Things became more challenging when the images were reversed, making it difficult for people to identify left from right based on movement. It appears that humans, like many other animal species, are trained to decode leg movements in a specific way.
“We believe that this visual selection is applied to recognize the appearance of animals based on leg movements and gravity,” said Troje.
Scientists suggest that this movement detection mechanism is part of an ancient evolutionary system that helps animals quickly identify nearby predators or prey. Other studies have shown that even a newly hatched chick utilizes this detection system. It seems that the brain is pre-programmed for this type of recognition.
Some predatory species, such as cats, crawl to deceive leg movements, enhancing their hunting capabilities. The research also explains the instinctual fear of species like snakes, insects, and spiders, which do not exhibit movements that align with conventional detection mechanisms.
M.T.
