Because most of human evolution took place while we were intimately involved with animals -- as food, or as potential food for them -- we developed parts of brain specifically devoted to paying attention to them.
So theorized Yale University cognitive scientist Joshua New, who showed study subjects pairs of photographs depicting people, plants, animals or tools, each image identical but for a single change. (If it sounds a bit like a kindergarten task or restaurant placemat entertainment for children, that's because it is.)
People noticed the changes more frequently in photographs of people and animals, ostensibly because we're more sensitive to movement in things we expect to move. (Timeless advice: don't worry about the rock unless it has fur.)
So is this learned or hard-wired? New then showed people paired images depicting either animals or cars -- the latter being something we've learned to classify as mobile, and have far more connection to than, say, elephants. Nevertheless, people were still better at noticing movement in animals than automobiles -- which is a little disconcerting, as we're far more likely to be run over by a minivan than a cape buffalo.
Two caveats to these findings, reported in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences: maybe people were responding to the novelty of the animals, and to the static depiction of the automobiles.
Show them pigeons rather than African megafauna, and video clips rather than snapshots, and maybe we'd be more aware of the cars.
But if the results really do represent reality, two possibilities:
maybe, in a million years, vehicular accidents will have wiped out those of us who are still more likely to notice a rat by the curb than a car in the passing lane. And maybe vehicle manufacturers could start offering a novel safety feature: cars tricked out as animals! Compacts as gazelles, mid-size sedans as zebras, pickups as wildebeests, SUVs as elephants.....
More news from the savannah [Economist]
Study published in PNAS, but damned if I can find it.*
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Image: Derek Powazek*
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