Animals and Human Society

Colin G. Scanes,Samia Toukhsati

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780128054383
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Veterinary Medicine

Animals and Human Society provides a solid, scientific, research-based background to advance understanding of how animals impact humans. Animals have had profound effects on people from the earliest times, ranging from zoonotic diseases, to the global impact of livestock, poultry and fish production, to the influences of human-associated animals on the environment (on extinctions, air and water pollution, greenhouse gases, etc.), to the importance of animals in human evolution and hunter -gatherer communities.As a resource for both science and non-science, Animals and Human Society can be used as a text for courses in Animals and Human Society or Animal Science, or as supplemental material for Introduction to Animal Science. It offers foundational background to those who may have little background in animal agriculture and have focused interest on companion animals and horses. The work introduces livestock production (including poultry and aquaculture) but also includes coverage of companion and lab animals. In addition, animal behavior and animal perception are covered. Animals and Human Society is likewise an excellent resource for researchers, academics, or students newly entering a related field or coming from another discipline and needing foundational information, as well as interested laypersons looking to augment their knowledge on the many impacts of animals in human society.

• Features research-based and pedagogically sound content, with learning goals and textboxes to provide key information
• Challenges readers to consider issues based on facts rather than polemics
• Poses ethical questions and raises overall societal impacts
• Balances traditional animal science with companion animals, animal biology, zoonotic diseases, animal products, environmental impacts and all aspects of human/animal interaction

Chapter 1

Animal Perception Including Differences With Humans

Colin G. Scanes University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, United States

Summary

There are similarities and marked differences between how animals and humans perceive their environment. Animals and humans perceive sound, light, chemicals (taste and smell), touch, and the earth’s magnetic field. In comparing humans with animals, there are differences in the following:

• Auditory perception: Ultrasonic sound (high frequencies of sound) is detected by some animals, such as cats, bats, rats, and mice, but not by humans. Moreover, there is spatial location of the source of sound in humans, but it is much more highly developed in some animals with the pinnae (external ears) capable of partial rotation.

• Light/visual perception (sight): This encompasses trichromatic vision in humans and Old World monkeys and great apes, but not in nonprimate mammals; these having dichromatic vision. In addition, birds and some mammals, such as dogs, have the ability to detect ultraviolet light. In contrast, humans do not. There are differences also in the eyes of nocturnal versus diurnal animals and their location. In mammals there seems to be an absence of extraretinal light reception unlike in birds.

• Chemoreception: Humans have a full repertoire of taste receptors while some animals lack some or all taste receptors. Most mammals have a well-developed vomeronasal chemoreception with humans having little or none. Humans have reduced olfactory chemoreception even compared to other primates. Some mammals have highly developed olfaction. Homing pigeons use odor detection.

• Tactile perception (touch): Many mammals have vibrissae (tactile hairs) but these are not present in humans.

• Other senses: In birds, there is magnetoreception detecting the direction of the Poles to aid migration. This does not appear to be the case in mammals.

Keywords

perception

senses

hearing

sight

taste

odor

smelling

tactile reception

magnetoreception

1.1. Introduction

Humans and animals use their senses to perceive the environment to locate food, water, mates, shelter, dangers, such as predators, or to communicate betwe...