We all know about the standard five senses – taste, touch, sight, smell, and hearing – but did you know some of God’s creatures have a little something extra?
In some animals that extra amounts to “super senses”: hummingbirds can see in the ultraviolet range (their eyes’ 4 types of color receptors is one more than we have), and elephants can communicate over long distances by using tones that are so low our ears can’t detect them.
In other animals that extra something goes beyond the standard five senses. Bumblebees seem to be able to use the positive electrical charge their bodies generate while buzzing around to help them detect flowers’ pollen which has a negative charge.
Meanwhile, sea turtles are able to somehow navigate across the ocean using variations in the Earth’s magnetic field to guide them on their way. Exactly how they do it is unclear, but scientists are closing in on how birds do something similar, and remarkably, it may involve quantum mechanics. It’s theory at this point and a really complicated one at that, but just the gist of it is amazing enough. Scientists are speculating that some birds can “see” the earth’s magnetic fields and do so by using particles in their eyes that are in a “quantum entangled” state. We don’t need to worry about what that exactly means; here’s one key point: that state lasts for just 1/10,000th of a second. That these birds might be processing information derived from a state lasting such a short time is pretty cool, but there’s another incredible wrinkle, as detailed by PBS Nova‘s Katherine J. Wu.
“Even in ideal laboratory conditions, which usually involve powerful vacuums or astoundingly icy temperatures, artificial quantum entanglement can unravel in just nanoseconds. And yet, in the wet, messy environment of a bird’s eye, entanglement holds. ‘It seems nature has found a way to make these quantum states live much longer than we’d expect, and much longer than we can do in the lab,’ Gauger says. ‘No one thought that was possible.’”
A nanosecond is a billionth of a second (yes, I had to look it up). This might have us tempted to say that the birdbrains are beating the brainiacs, but as amazing as the bird’s performance is, to give the credit where it is due we should be singing the praises of its Designer!
Humans beings also have a sixth sense, and we’re not talking about ESP. Proprioception is your sense of bodily awareness – the ability to know where all the bits of your body are without looking or feeling them. That might not seem as cool as “seeing” magnetic fields, but just consider what it allows you to do. When you close your eyes and can still touch your nose, that’s proprioception enabling you to do it. This is also why a quarterback can throw the ball accurately, even though his overhand motion doesn’t really allow him to see his throwing arm until the ball is released. And proprioception is why you can be balanced (even on one leg!) and how you can walk, without having to look down at your feet. This is one important sense!
So if you’ve ever thanked God for the wonderful flowers you can smell, the amazing sunrise you can see, the funky music you can hear, the delicious pizza you can taste, or the amazing softness of a newborn’s cheek that you can just barely feel, now you know there’s also a sixth sense to marvel at and thank Him for!
Creation Without Compromise 