Science spoke with Ishan Singhal, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sussex, whose team is developing a new framework—called “timescapes”—to understand how nonhuman animals experience time. The idea is still emerging, but it challenges a common assumption: that time perception is mainly a matter of biological speed, like faster vision or quicker reaction times.
Singhal explains that the core question is not simply whether animals see the world “faster” or “slower,” but how their brains segment and organize continuous sensory input over time. If experience is treated as a continuous stream, different species may be parsing that stream into meaningful units at different rhythms. This segmentation rate could fundamentally shape how the world appears to them.
A key motivation for the timescapes framework is that time perception is difficult to isolate experimentally. Researchers therefore rely on indirect tools such as temporal illusions. These include cases where the brain misorders events or misjudges motion, such as the “flash lag” illusion, in which a moving object appears ahead of a flashed one even when they are aligned in space and time.
Singhal notes that many animals also experience such illusions, which suggests that perceptual systems across species face similar computational challenges. However, the strength of these illusions can vary significantly. For example, macaques and humans both experience the flash lag illusion, but humans tend to show a stronger effect.
To make these differences more systematic, the timescapes framework proposes five “windows” that describe how perception unfolds over time. One example is the “window of revision,” which refers to how long perceptual information remains adjustable in light of new input. Experiments in birds and small mammals show that this window can be much shorter than in humans, meaning their perceptual experiences may stabilize or update more quickly.
Another is the “duration of persistence,” which describes how long a perceptual representation remains active when input is interrupted. In pigeons, for instance, very brief blank intervals between alternating images can already disrupt change detection, suggesting a much shorter persistence window than in humans.
Singhal emphasizes that these findings do not support simple claims such as “birds see in slow motion.” A commonly cited measure, the critical flicker fusion threshold (CFFT)—the frequency at which flickering light appears steady—can differ widely between species. Some birds, for example, can detect flicker at higher frequencies than humans. But Singhal argues that this alone cannot determine subjective time experience, since it reflects only one component of visual processing rather than overall temporal perception.
The framework also leaves room for more unusual cases. Jumping spiders are often discussed as potentially having very different temporal perception, partly because of their multiple specialized eyes and apparent resistance to certain temporal illusions. However, Singhal cautions that sensory differences alone do not directly map onto differences in perceived time.
Beyond basic science, the timescapes approach could have practical applications. Understanding how different animals process time could help reduce bird collisions with wind turbines, improve traffic and rail safety systems for wildlife, and inform conservation strategies that take sensory ecology into account.
Ultimately, Singhal’s aim is not to rank species by “speed” of perception, but to identify general principles governing how brains construct experience over time. In that sense, the question is less whether animals experience time differently from humans, and more how many different “timescapes” nature actually produces.
