In addition to their acute senses of smell, hearing, and sight, small mammals may have an additional method for detecting predators: heat-sensing guard hairs capable of picking up the infrared radiation emitted by warm bodies, a study suggests. The new research, published last week (December 8) in Royal Society Open Science, builds on a body of unpublished evidence collected not by a biologist, but by a physicist, Ian Baker, who develops infrared sensors for a British defense company.
Baker has long brought his work home with him, he tells The New York Times, using infrared cameras containing his sensors to scan the fields and woods near his house in Southampton, England, for animals. for animals. A series of anecdotal observations—such as the fact that cats seem to “stack” their bodies behind their cold nose when hunting, along with a similar twisting behavior in swooping owls—led Baker to hypothesize that perhaps ...
