Senses

NPR : Societies of Sound in the Forest

 

I was listening to NPR on my way to work this morning - a link to the radio expedtion that was playing is above. The commentator mentioned how people had known about these tiny insects called tree hoppers for a while, and they have been admired for the variety of colors and forms that they have. But that it wasn't until people listened to them with microphones that they realized that there was much more to them that their looks. Applying different senses opened the door to the study of social communications between these creatures and gives an indication of how communication may have eveolved in species. 

 

How much are we unaware of by not applying all the senses we have available to us in examining anything? Our senses are limited in the range that each sense can record. Sound is nothing more than vibrations that our ears can sense with a certain frequency range, beyond which some may be captured by sight or touch. There are ranges of activity that we can only percieve by conversion to sense that we can process and those representations are mere shadows and approximations of what really is. Creatures with sensory ranges different from our own most likelysee the world extremely differntly than what we percieve.