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Quote by Ed Yong

“Picture trichromatic human vision as a triangle, with the three corners representing our red, green, and blue cones. Every color we can see is a mix of those three...by comparison, a bird's color vision is a pyramid, with four corners representing each of its four cones. Our entire color space is just one face of that pyramid, whose spacious interior represents colors inaccesible to most of us.”

Quote by Ed Yong

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Ed Yong

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“In 19951995, (scientist) Theunis Piersma showed that Red Knots find shellfish up to eight times more frequently than would be expected if they were doing random searches...As a knot's bill descends into the sand, it pushes on the thin rivulets of water between the rains, creating a pressure wave that radiates outward. If there's a hard object in the way - say, a clam or a rock - the water must flow around it, which distorts the pattern of pressure. The pits on the knot's bill tip can sense those distortions, detectings surrounding objects without having to make contact with them. This ability, which Piersma calls "remote touch" is impressive enough, but the knot improves it even further by probing the same areas repeatedly, stabbing its beak up and down several times a second. This stirs up the sand grains, which settle into a denser configuration, heightening the buildup of pressure from the beak and making the distortions more obvious. Every time the knot lowers its head, the foud around it becomes more obvious, as if it were using a kind of sonar based on touch instead of hearing.”

Natural History Of Science
Book:An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
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“...Thousands of years ago, one particular lineage got a taste for humans, who had recently started living in densely populated settlements. Drawn to these sites, Aedes aegypti transformed into an urban animal that prefers towns over forests and... is tuned to the distinctive cues of our bodies above all else. This mosquito is now among the planet's most effective hunters of humans, and is extremely picky about anything else.”

Natural History Of Science
Book:An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
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