Sensational Senses: Amazing Ways Animals Perceive the World
INTRODUCTION The World beyond Your Senses Imagine you’re a superhero on a top-secret mission Disguised in civilian clothes you pursue a villain as she weaves down a crowded sidewalk She carries a roll of paper tucked under her arm the stolen blueprints You must recover them You are sure you can catch her but then she gives you a backward glance smiles and disappears into an alley
When you reach the alley it is dark and deserted A dead end Heavy metal doors line one brick wall Which one did she go through You must find out quickly before she gets away Your ears tingle You tip your head tune one ear to the first door and listen with your super hearing No one is inside At the second door all is quiet At the third door you can just hear distant footsteps That’s the one You yank it open and tear after her in hot pursuit In comic books and movies superheroes use their super senses to track down criminals But real super senses exist A big brown bat can navigate in total darkness in the world of nature Some animals have extraordinary ways of perceiving the world They can see hear smell taste or feel things that are hidden to humans Some have sixth senses special ones that you don’t have Animals use these sensational abilities to evade predators catch prey or send secret signals In nature super senses aren’t just cool to have they’re a matter of survival A mantis shrimp a colorful cousin of crabs and lobsters rests on the bottom of a coral reef Want to wander through the surprising world of supreme animal senses You’ll need your own sharp senses and your keen mind The animals are ready waiting for you with their unique ways of perceiving the world 5
CHAPTER 1 Star of the Swamp STAR-NOSED MOLE SCIENTIFIC NAME Condylura cristata SECRET HIDEOUT wetlands of southeastern Canada through the eastern United States as far south as Georgia SIZE up to 8 inches 20 cm long from star to tail WEIGHT up to 2.7 ounces 77 g SUPER SENSE ultrasensitive touch A dark creature scampers through a tunnel under a swamp Pit-pat-pit-pat Its body is cloaked in sleek black fur Its face appears to be under attack by a pack of tiny wriggling pink worms Except those aren’t worms that’s its superpowered nose Say hello to the star nosed mole As the creature darts through the dark tunnel it rapidly pats its supersensory snout along the moist marshy soil The nose encounters a soft pink slug Slurrp The slug disappears into the mole’s mouth The mole creeps forward bopping its nose along the ground Splat The nose touches a grub Chomp In a blink the tasty morsel is gone The mole will continue all day finding meals with its sensitive nose By the end of the day it will have eaten its body weight in food 6
SPEED EATING CHAMPION The star nosed mole lives in marshy wetlands This swamp dweller digs deep tunnels underground with its sharp front claws and sometimes it comes to the surface for a swim The mole is practically blind but sight isn’t much use in its dark subterranean world Instead the critter surveys the world through its star shaped nose a supersensitive organ for touch The mole’s nose is about the size of the tip of your pinkie It is made of twenty two fleshy pink arms or rays As the mole blindly scurries through a tunnel it rapidly presses its nose along the moist soil With each pat nerves in the star send signals to the mole’s brain Duncan Leitch was a student at Vanderbilt University when he wanted to learn more about how that extraordinary nose communicates with the mole’s brain He counted the star’s nerve fibers the individual threads that send signals along the nerves He added up over 168,000 nerve fibers By comparison the palm of your Star-nosed moles are skilled hunters that find food with their fleshy snouts
