Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan
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Animals and insects see the world in unique ways.
Animal Superpower -- The Eyes Have It: Photos
Animals and insects see the world in unique ways. From fish, to dogs, to birds to shrimp, super-eyesight allows them to thrive in places others can't. Dung beetles, for example, have internal compasses that are sensitive to the sun, Marie Dacke of Lund University and her colleagues have determined. In a paper published in the latest Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, she and her team explain that solar cues and skylight help guide where the beetles roll their coveted balls of poop. Video: 5 Incredible Insect Superpowers
Kay-africa, Wikimedia Commons
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Siberian huskies evolved colorful, almond-shaped eyes to see in low light, desolate northern regions. A quirk of genetics is that an individual dog may have two differently colored eyes. A single eye may also feature two colors. It's known as a "parti" or "split" eye. Photos: Ugliest Dog Contenders
shmoomeema, Wikimedia Commons
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Chameleons can rotate and focus their eyes separately to look at two different objects at the same time, according to the San Diego Zoo. This gives chameleons a full 360-degree view around their body. Photos: Chameleon Colors Act Like a Mood Ring
Steffen239, Flickr
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Ants have vision "superpowers," interactive media designers and artists Chris Woebken and Kenichi Okada believe. Using their ant apparatus, humans can see as ants do by placing microscope antennas on their hands (ants have these on their heads) that transmit a 50-fold magnified view of wherever the person's hand is resting. 33 Bizarre New Ant Species Discovered
williamcho, Flickr
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Imagine if you spent most of the day looking up from below. That is what escolar, a large and mysterious deep-sea fish, do, according to a new study by Eric Warrant of the University of Lund and colleagues. Escolar use this technique to "sit and wait" for prey, hoping something tasty will swim over them.
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Shrimps have some of the most complex visual systems in the animal kingdom. Justin Marshall of the University of Queensland and his team found that some shrimp stare down prey before attacking with a movement that is so swift that it actually boils water in front of the shrimp. (The other temperate water surrounding the shrimp prevents it from cooking itself to death!)
Tomasz Sienicki, Wikimedia Commons
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Most animals, including humans, have round pupils, but the eyes of goats (toads, octopi and a few others too) tend to be horizontal and rectangular with rounded corners. This broadens the horizon that they see, enabling them to better spot predators.
Stewart Butterfield, Flickr
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Bird eyes, such as those of the eagle seen here, feature oil droplets located in the front, Doekele Stavenga of the University of Groningen and colleagues have discovered. The droplets serve as "microlenses" that help to filter and direct light. On the Hunt for Bald Eagles
Pen Waggener, Flickr
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The eyes of certain animals, such as raccoons and cats, glow in the dark. Their eyes have a light-reflecting surface, known as the tapetum lucidum, which makes this possible. Depending on the animal, the glow takes on certain colors. Cats tend to have eyes that glow green. Miniature schnauzer eyes will sometimes glow turquoise, according to Colorado State University ophthalmologist Cynthia Powell.
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Cuttlefish, a type of mollusk, are the transformer visionaries of the animal kingdom. They reshape their entire eyes to adjust to what they see. Humans and many other species, in contrast, usually just reshape their eye lenses to get a better look at something.
Alexander Vasenin, Wikimedia Commons
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Giant squid have the largest eyes in the world, according to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. At up to 10 inches in diameter, the human head-sized eyes help giant squid to see in deep water. It's believed that they can detect a moving sperm whale from 394 feet away. Giant Squid Photos
MyFWCmedia, Flickr
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We create a mental map of our surroundings in our brain. As Michael Land of the University of Sussex explains, "To interact with objects in the world we need to know where they are, whether they are in our field of view or outside it. Objects in memory have to move in the brain as we move through the world, otherwise they would be not be in the right place."
Fernando Mafra, Fotopedia
Sighted people instinctually categorize other people by race, according to research presented at the 110th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in Chicago, but far fewer blind people do this.
“The visual process of assigning race is instantaneous, and it’s an example of automatic thinking — it happens below the level of awareness,” Asia Friedman, who conducted the research, explained in a press release.
“With blind people,” she added, “the process is much slower as they piece together information about a person over time. Their thinking is deliberative rather than automatic, and even after they’ve categorized someone by race, they’re often not certain that they’re correct.”
Friedman, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Delaware, interviewed 25 blind people to determine how they evaluate others. The study considered people who were born without sight as well as those who became blind later in life.
Friedman also considered prior research on what’s known as the “ automatic visual processing” of sighted people.
The research found that, generally, the blind assign race only after they have extensive interaction with a person. These are not just fleeting moments, or quick casual encounters. They instead tend to rely on lengthier conversations and use of other senses, such as hearing and touch.
Blind people as a whole, however, are not immune to categorizing others based on race.
“Many of my subjects said they thought that being blind made them less likely to develop stereotypes,” Friedman said. She added, however, that the interviews revealed many of them did indeed hold cultural stereotypes or make racial assumptions, even though their definition of race was not based on appearance.
Nevertheless, the study provides evidence that there are different ways to experience and construct race.
In the future, schools might build on the findings, with exercises designed to enhance our ability to relate to others using methods that go beyond surface level instinctual judgments.