Do animals really have a 6th sense?

Brut America

Do animals really have a 6th sense? Brut nature asked the question to a veterinarian...  With L'animal et l'homme

Transcript

00:00The animal world is something that never bothered us.

00:20Before the end of the 20th century, if we consider well,

00:24it was only at the end of the 20th century that we began to understand that the animal was other than us.

00:29Up to this point, we were telling it, ah, it's an instinct, it's a sixth sense,

00:33which means absolutely nothing.

00:48Animals absolutely don't feel things like us.

00:50Let's take classic things, the famous dog's flair.

00:53The dog, compared to us, has a long muzzle.

00:56It has a lot of olfactory sensory cells, 200 to 250 times more.

01:01On the other hand, it has a brain that is completely different,

01:04where there is a much larger olfactory area.

01:07And it has an interest in the smell that we don't have.

01:10We are visual beings.

01:12It is olfactory, so it has an interest in that.

01:15All this means that it has about 10,000 to 100,000 times more olfactory sense than us.

01:22We only see in the visible spectrum,

01:24but there are a lot of birds that see in ultraviolet,

01:27which allows them to differentiate colors.

01:29They sometimes parade some animals by putting ultraviolet colors that absolutely don't appear to us.

01:34Some raptors can even see the urine of their prey, mice, when they are hidden.

01:40They see like a little ultraviolet puddle.

01:42It's something you can't imagine, and they detect where the animal is.

01:52Our range goes from 20 to 20,000 hertz.

01:55That's very little.

01:56When you see an elephant, it barks.

01:58At that moment, we hear it.

02:00But it can emit infrasounds of 0.2, 0.3 hertz.

02:04And from that moment on, it goes on several hundred kilometers.

02:07And it can prevent congenital problems.

02:11In the other range, there is the bat and the dolphin.

02:14They will work in the ultrasounds.

02:16They will send ultrasounds of 50,000 to 100,000 hertz,

02:19and thanks to that, analyze their environment.

02:22It's something that is very difficult to understand for us,

02:25because in fact, it's a vision through sound.

02:28They can thus know the environment, see their prey, warn congenitals.

02:33These are sounds that we don't hear in infrasounds or ultrasounds.

02:47Electromagnetic waves

02:52The senses that we don't perceive at all, for example,

02:55are the electromagnetic sense.

02:58The Earth has a ferrous core,

03:00and by rotating it, it creates electromagnetic waves.

03:03We don't feel them at all.

03:05It's the migratory birds that feel them.

03:07It seems innate, because animals like cuckoos,

03:10which are not raised by their parents,

03:12instantly detect electromagnetic waves.

03:15Another thing that we don't detect at all

03:18are electric senses.

03:20There are animals that, surprisingly for us,

03:22produce electricity.

03:24They are often animals in the water.

03:26There is the African trumpet fish,

03:28there is the retropie, which is very well known,

03:30which emits electricity,

03:32either to catch prey, like rays,

03:34or to apprehend their environment.

03:37And then there is more surprising,

03:39there are those who detect electric fields.

03:41There is the ornithorynx, like a mammal.

03:43It's the only mammal that does that.

03:45And there is the shark, which,

03:47apart from its hearing, its olfaction,

03:49and many other senses it has,

03:51thanks to the Lorenzini bulbs

03:53located on its head,

03:55can detect electric fields emitted by fish

03:57and thus consume them.

03:59All these senses are the result of evolution.

04:02There was an adaptation of the animal to its environment,

04:04it needed certain senses,

04:06and logically, they developed.

04:13Transcription by ESO. Translation by —

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