Have you ever wondered why flies fly so fast from one place to another? Why is the squirrel so agile? Why are little sparrows, puppies, kittens, and even little children so agile? Adult human beings are usually much slower, but why do the leatherback sea turtles move more slowly? In fact, it depends on the rate of metabolism in the animal’s body. Moreover, researchers at Trinity College Dublin examined more than 30 species of animals. They found that the duration that an animal’s brain takes to process temporal visual information has a simple relation with the size of the animal’s body and the rate of metabolism in the animal’s body.
An adult human brain can process temporal visual information at the maximum rate of 100 frames per second. The ability of the brain to process temporal visual information, or to put it simply, the ability of the brain to view any movement, is called “Frame rate”. Experiments have shown that the fly’s metabolism is much faster than that of an adult human being, and because the fly is relatively small in size, the fly’s brain helps it to view at more than four times the frame rate of an adult human brain. In other words; flies view the world in slow motion more than four times as much as adult human beings view – just like any footage on a high-speed camera!
Video Source: Wikimedia; User – Jumbo1435, Pittigrilli
Even little boys and girls are usually very agile. Attempts can be made to control their agility, but it is not right to oppose their agility too much because nature gives them agility. As they get older, their bodies grow but the metabolism rate in their bodies decreases. As a result, their tendency to view the world in slow motion compared to adults and their agility go away on their own after a certain age.
Leatherback sea turtles have a much lower rate of metabolism than adult human beings, so if you sit down to observe the movements of a leatherback sea turtle, you will soon fall asleep! Also because its body is so large that the part of its brain that processes the temporal visual information helps it to view the world at a frame rate of about a quarter of that of an adult human brain. As a result, this animal views the world around it in much faster motion than an adult human being!
Image Source: Wikimedia; User – Nchele~commonswiki (talk | contribs)
