mantis-shrimp

The mantis shrimp has 16 types of photoreceptors. Pit vipers see heat. Many birds see ultraviolet colors invisible to humans and use them to choose mates. A dog's world is not black-and-white — it is dichromatic blue-yellow. Every animal lives inside a different visual universe shaped by what detecting which wavelengths was most useful for its ancestors. Here is what the science of animal vision actually reveals about perception.

A peregrine falcon in a full stoop reaches 389 km/h (242 mph) — faster than a Formula 1 car at peak speed. A mantis shrimp's striking appendage accelerates from rest to full speed in 700 microseconds, generating forces of 10,400 g. A cheetah covers 100 meters in 5.95 seconds. None of these are the fastest thing in nature: that distinction belongs to the photon, which crosses the observable universe in a lifetime and cannot be surpassed by anything with mass. Nature's speed records span 14 orders of magnitude, and each one illuminates a different physical or evolutionary constraint.