Is there a difference between sound, and sound waves? I say there is a distinction.... although most people do not see a distinction since most of us think that we directly perceive reality
By my way of thinking SOUND WAVES exist whether we can hear them or not SOUND otoh is what we hear If you choose not make that distinction, then you are right
I'm not sure why you want to insist that I say "sound waves" when "sound" is a completely adequate definition of the physical phenomenon. It seems similar to deciding that "light" is limited to what human eyes can turn into electrical impulses - with the physical phenomenon being "light waves". I don't believe I have to say "wave" all the time. These phenomena exist regardless of the evolutionary timeline of hearing development in life forms or the presence of a human in any location on Earth. Plus, light doesn't always behave as a wave. I'm not asking you to say "sound perception" instead of "sound" every time you want to refer to the human experience. Thanks - I was thinking of a standard hearing aid.
Because there are two entirely distinct and separate things going on. And very often, language asigns different words to different things. For frozen water may be called ice, or snow Fwiw Hearing, also called audition, is the perception of sound. Sound is comprised of vibrations that are perceived by organs inside the ear through mechanoreceptors. Sound first travels into the ear canal and vibrates the ear drum. These vibrations are transferred to bones in the middle ear called the hammer, anvil and stirrup which further vibrate the fluid in the inner ear. This fluid-filled structure, known as the cochlea, contains small hair cells that output electrical signals when deformed. The signals travel through the auditory nerve directly to the brain, which interprets these impulses into sound. Clearly the quote above makes a distinction between sound composed of vibrations, and the sound which is an interpretation of electric signals sent to the brain. The importance of this distinction is more easy to demonstrate in regards to light and vision For example there are all sorts of optical illusions where our vision does not map to reality. These illusions originate because of the peculiarities of the way our brain processes visual information. Likewise the is the phenomena of 3d vision. There are no 3d light waves. Our brain takes two different images and synthesizes 3d perception. Perhaps you have seen artificially created Images that only contain black and white specs. When viewed in a certain way, these specs printed on a 2d sheet of paper can create a 3d image in our mind. It is a 3d image that is entirely artificial.... all that really exists is specs of black and white on a piece of paper. So if anyone sees a 3d object.... it is only because of the brains Synthesis of stimuli to create a 3d illusion Btw... this is what tesla is doing in order to get 3d imaging from two cameras plus computation. They are not capturing 3d photons... they are capturing two separate images and computing a 3d mapping of reality. Teslas see in 3d the same way that we do.... by using computation to synthesize 3d from two separate 2d images Will It may not be interesting or useful for you to acknowledge the distinction that i am making. That is ok. Btw, in case you are interested... here is an example of an auditory illustration It will seem convincing that the beat is getting faster and faster.... but it is an illusion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Risset_accelerando_beat1_MCLD.ogg Illusions happen because of peculiarities of our brains processing of information If you just heard directly actual sound waves.... you would hear the reality rather than the illusion... the reality being that the beat does not infinitely accelerate
Your quote states that sound is composed of vibrations. I agree. I'm slightly curious who wrote this due to the "interprets these impulses into sound" grammar. Surely it should be "interprets as sound". We have 3d hearing, too. Cool link! I certainly agree that our methods of perception are not so perfect as to exclude illusions.
You can google “The signals travel through the auditory nerve directly to the brain, which interprets these impulses into sound. ” Which will return the same idea from many sites Yes And as you know, there are no 3d sound waves And if you cover one ear, 3d sound will vanish.... which is why people like stereo rather than mono.... which gets to the point that the human brain synthesizes two mono signals into a single 3d signal that did not previously exist in the sound waves
No, it is possible because it has a fluid to transport the vibrations from source to destination. Sound can also travel through solids and liquids. In fact, there is a strong correlation between sound and density. And there is "air" in space, but it is not dense enough to transmit the sound. In fact, any diver can tell you that sound travels faster in water than it does on the surface. We are able to tell the direction of where a sound originates on the surface because of the small time differential between a sound hitting each ear. The distance in time is small, but enough for our brains to determine what direction it comes from because that is how we evolved. Fish can do the same thing, and tell what direction a sound comes from almost instantly. However we can not do this, as it reaches our ears to fast to determine the direction it came from. This is why if a diver does something like rap on their tank with the butt of their diving knife, other divers have to look in all directions to find the source. We simply can not tell what direction it came from. Sound travels even faster through solid material. But because of the density it can not travel as far. In comparison, on the surface sound travels at around 343 meters per second (m/s). In the ocean, it travels at 1,531 m/s (1.5 k/s). Through the ground, it travels at around 6,000 m/s (6 km/s). The wonderful things I learned in being a diver.
Let's remember that sound and light come from single sources. They arrive from one direction only. Any other interpretation comes from having two sensory organs for sight and hearing and a brain to form an image. That image comes from all sorts of sources - memory, combinations of other sensory organs, etc. Many who listen to music like to feel the base line. Smell can play a role.
"3D" only exists because our brains tell us it is there. This is because of how our brains have evolved in order to handle sound. What we actually internally compute as "3D" is the small amount of time it takes a sound to reach one ear before the other. All animals with 2 "ears" have this capability thanks to evolution, it is an important survival trait. And no, there is also no "3D vision", this is a unique trait only found in hunters. A cow, a horse, deer, an elephant, none of these or any other herbivores have 3D vision. Their eyes are on the sides of their head, they have no concept of "3D" because of the placement of their eyes. This gives them a wider field of view to detect predators, but they also have no "3D" because they can only look at an object with a single eye. "3D" is only an evolutionary trait in carnivores (and omnivores) which rely upon it to catch their prey. When you are running from something that wants to eat you, you only have to see what direction it is coming from and run away. To catch such an animal as a predator you have to know it's distance if you want to actually catch it. Your analogy is a fail, because individuals who are blind also do not have "3D vision". They lack the twin optic sensors to allow their brain to formulate such an image.
Generally, i agree. The point that i have been trying to make in this discussion relates to the role the brain plays in synthesizing of electronic signals into our perception of reality. And, yes i agree that there are variations in configuration of sensory organs of different animals .... that will inherently create different perceptions of reality
Sound certainly does not come from a single source.... ie an orchestra in a concert hall.... not only are there lots of instruments, the sound is reflected from every surface of the concert hall. So that even a simple point source of sound arrives at your ears with reflections. For blind people... all these reflections are used to construct a perception of their environment.... much like what bats do Light is inherently filled with complexity due to the fact that you have two eyes that see different versions.... the mind does not see two separate images, it combines the data into a single richer image. This again is an example of synthesis of two divergent data streams into a single richer data stream. This synthesis happens as the mind accepts electronic data and uses computation to generate our perception of reality Yes.... but this can only happen because the brain is taking all sorts of inputs and synthesizing them into a single perception of reality.... rather than two separate versions, one for each eye Fwiw, i came across the following youtube about “magic eye”. Images that were popular in the 70-80s Essentially, they use computers to create a flat picture...from which we can see a 3d image of something that never existed. This can only happen because our eyes and mind create a synthetic reality... because what our minds “see”. Is a 3d perception of something that does not, and has never existed except in our mind
How does a horse judge the distance needed for a jump? For example, I refer to the ones without riders. It seems to me that they must judge distance.
Just a wild guess: Perhaps by turning their heads back and forth slightly, they can get the same effect as binocular vision. It seems like I've actually seen cows and horses doing this - slight turning their heads back and forth, as if to allow an object to be viewed with one eye then the other.
Ah, not side to side, but by raising their heads and looking downward, they have binocular vision over a narrow range. https://equusmagazine.com/riding/visual-discrepancies-31223
In a very small "sweet spot" directly in front of them, and nowhere else. And naturally, horses do not jump the way that you see one in a show arena. There what you are actually seeing is an un-natural synthesis of man and animal. The horse does not actually "jump" because it sees the location of the fence, it jumps because it is instructed to by the rider. In nature, a horse or other quadruped herbivore will rarely go over such an obstacle if it can ever be avoided. Get a horse that is not confident in it's rider (or an unskilled rider that does not give the right cues), and you will generally see them balk at the last moment. This is because such an action is simply not natural. The rare exceptions are for example deer. They are evolved to "leap" as part of their nature in both detecting and avoiding prey. And can jump on average 12-15 feet. In the wild, they will both leap in order to see what is in the tall grass around them (like say a crawling wolf), as well as random leaps while running (part of an evolved trait to hopefully catch a predator that is about to jump at them off-guard). A horse in comparison is much larger and more stocky, and can jump more in the range of 4-5 feet on average. They do not leap randomly to detect prey (no need, their eyes are higher off the ground), and random leaps are of less benefit when the animal masses many times that of the predators that might try to take them down. In predator evasion, horses use their size and stamina more than speed. Most predators can actually run faster than a horse, but they can not run for as long. An average horse can run 30 mph, a deer 40 mph. A wolf can run 35 mph, a cougar can run 45 mph. The predators are generally faster, but lack the stamina to keep up with their prey animals beyond a short burst. Hell, this is actually the kind of prey humans evolved to catch. Yes, horses and deer unquestionably run faster than humans. But humans can also over time outrun both of those animals with ease. Your average level marathon runner would have no problem running down a horse in the wild. Many in sports medicine even believe the "runners high" is probably a remnant from the time when we used to actually run down and catch our daily meal, and not but it at a store. And there are other ways to catch prey. Most cats have evolved ambush type attacks, while most canines have evolved operating in packs. Both help catch the animals with greater endurance, but in different ways. Can most horses jump a 4 foot fence? Yea, actually they can. But they will not do so, unless there is an extreme need (hunger, mating, evade predator) or there is a human on it's back guiding it through the jump.
And yes, there are always aberrations. Feinting goats, cats that love to swim, dogs that climb trees. You will always have some number in a species that do things that are generally considered "unnatural". But remember, they are the exceptions and not the rules.
i was considering that a horse must have depth perception in order to jump. I wasn't talking about aberrations.
OK, danger. Science content. Yes, as myself and other have stated, horses do have "binocular vision". But it is a very narrow range. Roughly a 65 degree arc directly in front of them. That is a 65 degree spot, in an arc that is around 355 degrees. But it is also not directly in front of them, like on a human. It is downwards at a roughly 45 degree angle and lower, not straight in front of them. Now in a human, the binocular range is around 114 degrees, out of a field of view of around 210 degrees. So already, we can see that humans have close to double the radius of binocular vision that a horse does. And because of head-eye angle it extends out to a greater distance than that of the equine. And the final thing? Horses are myopic. In other words, they are nearsighted. To the range if they were human of around 20/40. In other words, they would all need glasses legally to operate a vehicle of they were a human. And interestingly, that is mostly true when it comes to horses that are primarily domestic. In wild horses we see the exact opposite, they suffer from hyperopia. And tend to have great visual acuity at a distance (great for spotting predators), but poor up close. Not once have I or others said they do not have any depth perception. Simply that it is very limited, because it is not a crucial survival adaptation in a prey animal. Just like intelligence is not a key evolutionary adaptation in a prey animal. Intelligence evolves most strongly in carnivores and omnivores, not herbivores. After all, how much intelligence does it take to sneak up on a blade of grass?
