Showing posts with label biological motion perception. Show all posts
Showing posts with label biological motion perception. Show all posts

Saturday, May 26, 2018

Invisible

Something in our brain separates biological motion from wind or water movement. Looking at a windy meadow, with swaying grasses and trembling seed pods, I notice (not exactly "see", because it's on the edge of my field of vision) a scrambling, a fluttering, a flitting; something alive! I turn and look that way; there's nothing there. The critter is now sitting still, and invisible.

The camera sees better, sometimes.

A tiny moth, hanging upside-down between an old stem and a blade of grass, the legs pointing upwards and out, and now looking like bits of twigs or dead grass blades.

The moth now was moving only in response to the wind, although there was a slight blurring visible to my eyes if I looked at it directly, still not seeing the moth, just the vibration of its wings.

And I still didn't see it, although I knew where it was. The camera's limited depth of field pulls it out of the out-of-focus background; my eyes didn't find a focus point.

(Unidentified moth; photos sent to BugGuide. No response so far. There will be; they're always helpful.)

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