Where Knowledge Rules

Sciences:

Biology

Get a Widget for this title

How animals recognize each other

The ability of some animals to recognize and find each other is surprising and incredible, in many cases.
If we human beings had to find our mother, son or partner among 10,000 people crowded on a great beach or square and dressed in the same way, we would have enormous problems because we could rely only on our sight; good, in the average, but not as efficient as that of an eagle or of a vulture.


We would take many hours, if we are lucky, wandering by chance in the anxiety and we would risk of never finding whom we are looking for.

Instead, we know that penguins and seals, living in crowded communities of some hundreds of thousands of individuals along the wide shores of polar and sub-polar regions, are able to find again their chicks and cubs that are waiting for food in their nests among this immense crowd of animals, when they come back from their long fishing trips across the sea.

The noise, the smell and the images of thousands and thousands of the same species seem confound and melt together in a total mess, making apparently impossible to distinguish a single individual and locate it.
Instead, most parents reach in finding their sons, maybe following a complex mix of sensory traces absolutely unique for each cub to be found. This is like a fingerprint, recognized by a computer among the many recorded in its memory thanks to its particular file name.

This is due to the great sensibility of animals' senses (much higher than ours) that allows them to reveal with their ears and nose extremely low concentrations of odorous molecules like hormones, fatty acids, essential oils from their odorous glands.
Such particular sensibility to smells exists because most of animals have much more sensible cells in their noses than humans, as we well know and exploit with our dogs, thousands times more sensible than humans, as approximately calculated.

In this manner, high selectivity and sensibility are surely coupled, but our researchers frequently don't know how this really happens and which sense is the most important for recognizing an individual in such difficult conditions but, most likely, all animal senses are involved in the same time.

The gnu calves, in Africa, are able to recognize their mothers from their smells and sounds (memorized since their birth) in the middle of their cattle formed by many thousands of gnu, apparently, all equal for us. This, at least, until a certain distance.
The same mother is able to find her cub but, according to the many


Below are the top articles rated and ranked by Helium members on:

How animals recognize each other

  • 1 of 11

    by Vadim Osadchi

    Although animals interact using the very same senses humans are accustomed to, their control of the senses comes in a wider

    read more

  • by Sangay Glass

    Animals identify each other in much the same way as humans do. They use sight, sound and smell. Most important is that they

    read more

  • 3 of 11

    by Rex Trulove

    While humans are members of the animal kingdom, our powers of recognition, specifically related to the sense we use, is

    read more

  • 4 of 11

    by Dambrath

    Animals like humans have a range of senses that they can use to recognize each other and different ways of communicating.

    read more

  • 5 of 11

    by Sage Doak

    Recognition of other animals is essential to all animals, whether interspecific (other species) or intraspecific (same species).

    When

    read more

View All Articles on:
How animals recognize each other

Add your voice

Know something about How animals recognize each other?
We want to hear your view. Write_penWrite now!

Helium Debate

Cast your vote!

Did dinosaurs evolve into birds?

Click for your side.

172810

Featured Partner

Reason Foundation

Reason has partnered with Helium, giving you the chance to write for a cause. Browse Reason's featured titles, p...more

What is Helium? | Buy Web Content | Contact Us | Privacy | User agreement | DMCA | User Tools | Help | Community | Helium’s Official Blog | Link to Helium

Helium, Inc.
200 Brickstone Square Andover, MA 01810 USA