However, space and time are relative according to the theories of Special and General Relativity which were developed by Einstein. A time period which is two hours long with respect to an observer may be one and a half hours or three hours long with respect to another observer. Let us suppose that two events are happening in different places (say New York and Istanbul) but simultenously with respect to an observer who is in between. The same events, however, will not be simultenous with respect to an observer who is in motion. If the observer moves towards the event happening on his right, that is, he diverges from the one on his left, then he will perceive the one on his right as happening earlier than the one on his left. Contrariwise, if he moves towards his left, that is, diverges from his right, then he will perceive the one on his left as happening earlier than the one on his right. Distances in space are thus relative and varying with respect to observers’ positions.

Matter has a certain amount of influence over time and space according to Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity (which he described as the theory he most enjoyed). Proportional to its mass, an object may cause changes in the geometry of space or in the acceleration of time. The curvature of space, for instance, is infinite near a black hole, which is regarded as a highly dense substance. Time is, however, constant and does not accelerate. This theory, with such peculiar outcomes, is mathematically perfect and coincides with observations conducted until now. Whether the universe is finite or infinite depends on the density of the material it contains, according to this theory.

Einstein’s theories, though they seem flawless, cannot explain how the universe started all by itself. All laws of physics lose their validity at the time of the Big Bang (the explosion at the creation of the universe) and all the questions relevant to that moment and its precedents remain unanswered. How come the Big Explosion happened? How did it happen? What was there before the explosion? We need to rely on quantum physics in order to answer these questions or at least to deal with their paradoxes and be able to say something about the formation of the universe.

Newton’s clock model or the deterministic model (that everything is realized in strict accordance with certain rules) is still influential in Einstein’s theories, whereas quantum physics (which explains the activities of atomic and subatomic particles) is a more revolutionary approach to matter, actively engaging the observer in processes and tying events to probabilities. It seems that developing consistent theories about the beginning of the universe may only be achieved by using quantum physics, which might also have something to say about the macrocosm. However, the issue of how the theory of relativity and quantum physics can be reconciled is not yet solved. Here, it seems that the theory of multiple or parallel universes may be an alternative solution, and hence, many issues have been hitherto paradoxical and unsolvable are now being explained within a rational and logical frame of reference.

What are multiple universes?

In the Many Universes Interpretation (MUI) developed by physicists like Everett in the 1950s, the paradoxes caused by quantum physics in our modes of thinking are being eliminated and the issue of how the universe functions is being reviewed by an all-new approach. A parallel universe is a realm that carries features identical to those of ours and comprises space, time, matter, galaxies, stars and human beings all identical to those of ours. It can even be said that these two universes are sharing the very same space and that they are positioned to coexist. The substances in these parallel universes are interrelated according to the laws of quantum physics. That is, there are a great many universes like ours. You may, for instance, be taking a walk in a forest in a parallel universe while you are reading this article in this one.

Alternative histories can help us to understand parallel universes. How would the world have been shaped if the Ottoman sultan Mehmet II, who conquered Istanbul, had also succeeded in conquering Rome? Or, what would be happening now if Hitler had won World War II? Each of these probabilities has been realized in a parallel universe. Any world which is imaginably different and any history which is conceivably alternative is present and available somewhere out there. We can understand these multiple universes when we also consider our preferences. A person who chose to study medicine, for instance, would later become a medical doctor. If he or she had chosen biology, they might later have become a research scientist. Or, a man who chose to marry a woman merely due to her physical beauty but did not have a happy family life with her might have enjoyed a happy family life if he had married a pious woman who was his social equal and compatible with him. Thus, different universes, that is, differing probabilities become available according to our preferences.

Parallel universes are often a theme in science fiction novels and films. In the popular television serial Star Trek, for instance, during a routine beaming up process from a planet to their starship “Enterprise,” Captain Kirk and his crew suddenly and accidentally find themselves in an ionized gas cloud. They find themselves inside an “Enterprise” that is almost identical to but surprisingly different from their own Enterprise. But, interestingly, the Mr. Spock in the new “Enterprise,” is an extremely cruel person. In fact, all of the crew are cruel in this alternative starship. Meanwhile, the cruel Captain Kirk and his cruel crew have been beamed up to the other (good) “Enterprise” and these bad men have been imprisoned by the good Mr. Spock there. Both Mr. Spocks understand, after a short while, what the problem is. The Enterprise, due to an ionized gas storm, has been directed to a parallel universe in which an identical “Enterprise” and its identical crew exists. The duplication is almost perfect except that good is bad and vice versa. Had the ion storm not formed a space-time interconnection, the two (parallel) universes would have never become aware of one another. The good and bad versions of the parallel Captain Kirks have replaced each other; while the bad Captain Kirk is being held prisoner inside the good Enterprise, the good Captain Kirk has found himself inside the bad “Enterprise” and soon noticed that he can covertly correct some errors without being noticed and by acting as if he was one of the bad character.

In the television series The Twilight Zone a woman meets her (parallel) double while waiting at the bus stop. Her double has apparently left her own universe and entered this one. This double wants to replace her and succeeds in doing this. The genuine woman is meanwhile sectioned to a mental hospital.

In the story “August 2002, Night Meeting” from The Mars Chronicles, a terrestrial person named Thomas Gomez who has settled on the planet Mars happens to meet a parallel universe there. He hears an elderly man as he is about to depart after taking gasoline for his vehicle: “You may return to your world if you will not accept Mars as it is. Everything is different here: soil, air, canals, aborigines (though I have not yet seen any of them, but heard their voices) and watches. Even my watch functions peculiarly and even the time is different here.”

Thomas then meets a Martian with gold-color eyes being carried by a machine that looks like a preying mantis peculiarly painted in bluish-green colors and greets him. The Martian greets Thomas in his own language. But neither understands the other. The Martian approaches and touches him, but Thomas does not feel him. They somehow start speaking the same language. As they try to shake hands, each one’s hand passes through the other’s as if they did not have hands at all. They can see each other, but cannot touch each other. They realize that they are in intersecting parallel universes. Each can sense his own body, but sees the other one as a ghost. They try to understand why they cannot touch each other while their universes mutually counter-influence. But they cannot find the answer. As he looks at his environment, the Martian sees a beautiful city full of marvelous things, while Thomas sees only desolate, unpopulated, ancient urban ruins. He shouts at the Martian, “All of these canals are empty!” The Martian replies,”The canals are full of violet-colored flowers.” They finally understand that what they are experiencing is something related to time. However, they cannot discern who is in the past and who is in the future. Each of them thinks that his own world is the real one and the other one’s is a realm of fancy.

Such peculiar-sounding tales contain some reality in the light of new physics.

New Physics: How do we know multiple universes exist?

One of the best explanations of quantum physics is the “double slit” experiment. In this experiment, a coherent light source which is emitting particles (photons and electrons for instance) illuminates a thin plate with two parallel slits cut in it, and the light passing through the slits strikes a screen behind them. When both slits of the thin plate are open, an interference pattern of alternating bright and dark bands is observed on the screen. However, a periodic pattern does not result as the pattern that forms when one slit is blocked is directed over the pattern that forms when the other slit is blocked. Or, when a measuring is conducted in order to determine the slit through which a particle has passed, the particle is behaving as if it is certainly passing through one of the slits, but this is distorting the pattern.

We can deduce, from this experiment, that the tendency of the particle changes when either one or both slits are open. Quantum physics explains this peculiar incident as the mutually-influencing of the probability of particle’s passing through one slit with the probability of the same particle’s passing through the other slit. That is, the particle, though being a single one, is behaving as if it is passing through both slits. The only logical way of developing a reasonable postulate is to consider that the particle passes through one slit in one world (i.e., universe) and through the other one in another world. So, these are the parallel universes which we have been trying to explain since the beginning. When the particle hits the screen, these universes unite again and become a single universe.

Another striking example which discloses the existence of parallel universes is the “thought experience” known as “Schrödinger’s cat.” The Austrian physicist Schrödinger devised this clever thought experiment: A cat sits in a steel chamber with a flask that contains a poisonous substance. There is also a small amount of a radioactive substance with a 50 % probability of decaying and thereby triggering a mechanism which will smash the flask, release the poison and so kill the cat. On the other hand there is also the 50 % probability that the radioactive substance will not decay, the poison will not be released and the cat will not die. Now, according to quantum physics, the cat will be 50% dead and 50% alive, that is, there is a superposition of states (the cat is both dead and alive) until the sealed chamber is opened and the cat observed. Naturally, such a thing is against logic and incomprehensible. The multiple universes (multiverse) model, however, explains this complicated situation more easily by saying that the cat is alive in one universe and dead in another.

Black holes and cosmology

Black holes, which came to the attention of science because of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, are space-time structures that absorb everything including light. They form as a result of the collapse of stars which are three to four times bigger than the sun and which have fully consumed their energy. The structures of space and time become distorted due to the terrifying magnitude of a black hole’s gravity as it is approached. Some physicists argue that black holes are passages between parallel universes and we would find ourselves in another universe if we could pass through one.

Belief in the existence of such a great number of universes also sheds light on cosmology, the science dealing with the creation of the universe and its structure. Possibly the most vital of the subjects that cosmology rarely touches on is the fact that the structure and composition of the universe are so delicately devised that it enables living species and conscious creatures to exist and survive in it. Only a single one among the many possible universes has been selected and made inhabitable for living and conscious species. If the universe had had rather different characteristics, these species would not have been able to live in it. The gravitational energy in the universe, for instance, is almost identical with the expansion energy of the Big Bang, and very delicate balances are observable in the constants of the laws of physics. By thorough observation, we can deduce that everything has been devised and prepared for our existence.

The multiple universes (multiverse) theory asserts that all possible universes exist. According to this assertion, there are universes in which no conscious species exist. The reason why we perceive that everything has been devised in this way in our universe is because we believe that we cannot survive in another one which is not devised with the delicate balances that enable the survival of living species. In fact, all this reminds us that there may exist unseen realms and worlds different than ours. The existence of beings like angels and jinns which cannot be observed by worldly eyes and the fact that the believers are those who believe in the unseen are mentioned in the Holy Qur’an. The existence of people like Khidhr who lived in realms of life different than ours, various prophetic miracles, saintly powers and the true prophetic dreams (ru’ya-i sadiqah) that give true prophesies all inform us that there are other realms beyond the visible one. Thanks to the new physics, the life in the grave, the life in the realm of barzakh (the intermediary life between the mundane and eternal worlds), the dimensions of paradise and of hell and their levels which we cannot explain in concrete terms, the realms in which we will either be punished or rewarded at existential co-ordinates beyond our imagination all seem more easily comprehensible today.

In fact, the principles of faith such as fate, death, the hereafter, the resurrection and doomsday do not need support from the cold and positivistic viewpoints of the physics with which we are familiar today. However, the fact that the idea of parallel universes was initially used in science-fiction works and only later dealt with in quantum physics might lead us to an important conclusion: We are witnessing today that many events which we could hardly imagine in the past (for instance, saving audio-visual recordings in huge computers and later presenting them as witnesses) are becoming quite common and ordinarily achievable in the real world. Likewise, the possibility that all our deeds which we perform throughout our lifetime might be saved by recorders in unknown metaphysical universes has become more easily acceptable and comprehensible. Today’s imaginings might be the realities of one day in the future. Everything conceivable or inconceivable to us may be possible, for the One who created things is God, Who is Omnipotent and All-Knowing. Additionally, as He has informed us about all these phenomena in His Divine Revelation the Qur’an, of which even not a single word has been changed, we do not feel the least doubt. We shall experience how smoothly our souls transcend from this realm to another (as if passing from one room to another) when death knocks on our door one day. Certainly, we should never forget that the ease or difficulty of these experiences and the sights that we shall encounter in other realms will all depend on and be created out of our deeds in this mundane life. And, as we say “all praise and thanks be to God” in return for an apple that we eat here, we will witness, only when we face the reality, how this gratitude of ours will turn out to be a heavenly reward (a tree or a palace) in a different universe.

Salih Adem studied Biophysics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign until 2001 and philosophy at the University of Maryland at College Park until 2004. Adem is now freelance writer on physics and philosophy.

The quantum description of the universe is very different than the classically observed one, or our perceptions in everyday life. This new way of looking at nature has many consequences, both philosophically and practically. The modern technological development of the second half of the last century may be a very good example of the consequences of the discovery of the quantum world. Now we have a bunch of gadgets from cellular phones to long-lasting batteries, from engineered drugs to space missions, from pocket size computers to nanotechnology, a wide range of end-products of the quantum world. Certainly, these will not be the only changes in our life; quantum sciences will eventually affect the way we look at life.

One of the most dramatic potential changes in thought may arise from the discovery of the quantum entanglement of particles. Quantum entanglement can be described as non-classical correlations of different parties. It is very different than the classical description and can be explained by using the following analogy. Imagine an author writes a book of one hundred pages which includes the most precious arts or explains very important facts about the universe depending on one’s point of view. To make it more interesting or more realistic, he distributes each page of the book to one of his servants and asks them to read and understand the rules written in the book. That is, each servant has access only to one page of the book. If we assume the information on the pages is classical, every servant has one hundredth of the total information written in the book and if we let them communicate with each other, they can in principle reconstruct the written information. However, the situation is very strange in the quantum world. If the information in the book is written using entanglement principle of the quantum world, then none of the servants has any definite idea about the partial information on his page. It is as if the pages are empty. All the information about the content of the book is written on correlations of the pages, not physically on each page. So, the servants can have no idea, if they only look at their pages.

Einstein vs. Bohr

To understand this strange feature of quantum entanglement we should review the historical development of the concept. One of the earliest objections came from Einstein, who was one of the developers of quantum theory. Although he explained the photoelectric effect by introducing the concept of quantization of light, he did not believe in some of its consequences. Mainly, he was not sure about the completeness of quantum theory because of its contradictions with common sense and the theory of relativity. The famous 1927 Solvey Con ference was a turning point for debates between Einstein and Niels Bohr, who was also one of the developers of quantum theory and the Copenhagen interpretations of the theory.

Einstein tried to show this incompleteness by proposing different Gedanken (thought) experiments. Each of these questions was answered rigorously by Bohr. However, Einstein was never convinced by Bohr about the completeness of the theory. The last one of these Gedanken experiments was one related to our concept, quantum entanglement. It is called the EPR paradox and takes its name from the authors of the famous paper “Can a quantum mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete?” by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen in 1935.

Mainly, the paper was about faster-than-light communication between physically separated objects, two particles. If two particles are generated from a source affected by the existence of a conservation law, like the conservation of energy, or linear or angular momentum, the conserved property is carried by the particles independent of their separation. If the conserved quantity is observed by measuring one of the particles, the other particle arranges itself according to the result of this measurement independent of the distance between particles. According to Bohr, this arrangement happens instantaneously at the time of measurement, which conflicts with Einstein’s theory of special relativity that says nothing can travel faster than light. Apparently, the knowledge of the result of the first measurement is carried somehow to the second particle. Bohr’s reply is now called the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. He takes this property as a postulate of quantum mechanics by saying that the state of the particles includes all information about them. After this explanation Einstein never replied again.

If we look more closely at the proposed experiment, we can deduce that in reality information is not transferred faster than light because although the measurement result of the second particle is decided by the first measurement, this information is hidden for the second particle. The result of the second measurement makes sense only if the result of the first measurement reaches the second one. Otherwise, the second measurement can be described as a random outcome of possible results. Now it makes sense if we return to the book description. Here our book has only two pages. Each page is given to one servant. If they only look at their pages there is no information, which means that measurement results are random.

However, if the two servants work together and share their measurement results, then the initial information can be reconstructed.

Coins

Einstein’s point of view can be described in the following example. Imagine we have two coins with the usual heads and tails on different sides. Let us assume that there is a conservation law deduced from everyday experiments stating that if we flip these two coins we always have two opposite results; that is, if we get tails from the one that we measured, the other one is heads for sure and vice versa. In the real world, these coins can be identified as electrons, photons or atoms. Heads/tails corresponds to the spin components for electrons, polarization directions for photons or ground/excited states for atoms. Now, imagine these two coins are separated by a large distance.

Einstein says that as soon as separation occurs the result of flipping is decided but this result is hidden from us. One can measure or learn it by performing a measurement or looking at each coin. Moreover, looking at only one coin is enough to determine the measurement result of the other coin, since the results are correlated. Conjecturing that the side of the coin is determined at the time of measurement is against the causality principle of the theory of relativity which says that cause and effect cannot be simultaneous. However, I am of the opinion that reality is closer to what Bohr described. That is, the result of the measurement is decided at the measurement time not at the separation time. Before the measurement, each coin shows both heads and tails at the same time. The information, deduced at the point of measurement when one of the coins is measured, is transferred faster than light, in other words, at infinite speed.

The nature of each coin is also very strange before the measurement because it includes both sides at the same time with equal probabilities, but a classical coin has only one side at one time, either heads or tails. Here the classical coin means the flipped or measured coin. This property of the quantum world is called parallelism. As in the famous case of Schrödinger’s cat, sometimes two extreme situations can happen at the same time. Schrödinger’s cat is a very special cat which is dead and alive at the same time, like a quantum coin. However, when one measures such a cat, that is, observes the cat, its nature collapses to one of the known situations, either a dead cat or a live cat. This measuring process happens systematically due to interactions with its surroundings and is called decoherence.

Although the quantum world is very strange and different than the classical world, it encapsulates more reality than we experience in our everyday life. In the near future, we can expect that ways of looking at the world will be different than the present mechanical, deterministic, and materialistic view because of the unexpected outcomes of the quantum world. If you know how to look, you can already feel this change.

Sight: When we look around, we see several shades of colors and hundreds of thousands of images. Human beings, and several animals, are able to see images when light enters the eye and releases an electrical signal through our the nerves to the brain. These signals are then transformed into the images, or pictures, that we see. All creatures see these images differently; some see images in different outlines in shape, color, clarity, circumstances, and distance.

Dogs, because of their hunting needs, see twice as much as do human beings. In addition, dogs have an outstanding ability to follow movement and to perceive direction, speed, and trajectory. Trajectory is what gives dogs the innate ability to plot an angle and predict an angle of movement. For example, dogs have an astonishing ability to know the exact spot where a moving object will land and know from which angle it will be coming. This is the reason why dogs are such good ball and Frisbee catchers; because they visually know the exact point of impact of an object as it falls back to the ground. Cats, on the other hand, have a different reason for being such good jumpers. Cats’ faces are flat between the eyes, a rare feature in the animal world, which makes it easier for them to work together. As a result, a cat can focus sharply and three-dimensionally, an ability that allows it to visually judge distances with great accuracy before jumping.

Rabbits, for example, are one of the few animals that can see all around them (front and back) without turning in either direction. Their eyes are located on the sides of their head, which enables them to see in all directions. Rabbits, frequent preys for predators, are always on the alert, and their eyes are located in the best place to help them see their enemies.

Human beings and wildlife animals have two kinds of vision cells that are located inside the back of the eye: cones and rods. Cones detect colors in bright light, including black, white, and gray. Rods provide sharp vision in dim light, but do not detect colors. Night creatures have more rods than cones, which provide them with sharper vision at night-but with only shades of gray. Also, to assist these creatures in the dark, they have a special layer in the back of their eyes, called the tapetum, which acts as a mirror when light passes through it. If the rod does not detect the light during the first passing, the tapetum reflects the light back to the rod, thus giving the rod a second chance to pick up on the light and see an image. It is this layer that makes some animal’s eyes shine in dim light.

An owl’s eye, for example, is so sensitive in picking up light, that research shows that an owl can follow a trial lit up by a candle 1,000 feet away (3,600 meters).1

Another amazing sight feature is found in predator birds: “telescopic” eyes that allow them to see by making a far away distant object appear larger. Birds such as the hawk and eagle have the sharpest sight of any animal. These birds have about 1.04 million vision cells in the back of their eyes, which that enables them to see a mouse from as far as one mile away.2 (Human beings have only about 130 million vision cells.)3

Although animals are believed to see colors similar to the way humans do, scientists are not sure how bees and insects see color. Scientists believe that, among some other creatures, bees, birds, and insects can see a color that human beings can not: ultraviolet colors. In addition to red, blue, and yellow, flowers often have ultraviolet patterns that show these birds and insects the way to the plant’s nectar and pollen. Such sight makes it possible for these creatures to find and feed on the flowers’ nectar and pollen.

However, not all animals have only two eyes. Jumping spiders, for instance, have eight eyes. There are two big eyes in the front, and six smaller eyes on the top of the head slightly toward the sides. The two front eyes are very well developed and act as a pair of binoculars that give the spider a clear image of objects up to one foot (30 cms) away. The little eyes are called secondary eyes. These eyes can spot moving objects and have a built-in reflecting layer that helps the spider to see objects in dim light. The secondary eyes are the eyes that actually measure the distance the spider needs to jump to catch its prey.

Hearing: Just as with other senses, human beings and animals have different levels of hearing. Most animals have only two ears, which helps all of us locate the origin of a sound. Having two ears helps us locate where a sound comes from. Since sound reaches the ears at slightly different times, this makes a sound louder than in one ear. This difference in volume and arrival time in one ear is an indication as to the origin of the sound. Sound is expressed in hertz (cycles per second), which are repetitive vibrations per second. Adult human beings, with a normal hearing ability, can hear from twenty to twenty thousand cycles per second. Amazingly, wolves can hear up to eighty thousand cycles per second, and dogs can hear up to thirty-five thousand cycles per second, almost twice as many as humans.

Cats have a surprising hearing of between fifty to one hundred thousand cycles per second-three to five times than what human beings can hear. In addition, a cat’s ear has thirty muscles that control the ear muscles that can rotate 180 degrees. This give cats the opportunity to hear its surroundings without moving its head.

An owl’s ear, however, are located at different heights. The difference in height enables an owlit to determine if a noise is coming from a high distance or from the ground. Another interesting feature of many owls is a flat heart-shaped face. The shape of its face functions as a reflector that makes faint sounds louder. These two features enable owls to be the great hunters they are and helps them to hunt in the dark.

Not all animals and insects have “ears”; some have holes in either in their head or in another part of their body, and others have eardrums, such as birds, insects, and fish. Fish’s ears, for example, are located under its skin behind its eyes. This way, a fish can pick up on vibrations that pass their skin under the water. Other fish makes some of these noises by vibrating an internal organ or by rubbing their fins together. Fish use these vibrations to communicate with other fish, to mate, to warn other fish, or to swim together in groups.

Smell: Animals with different smelling needs have been created with different noses and different smelling abilities. Among the different abilities and noses, an elephant’s nose stands out in many individuals’ minds; at least mine. These animals’ noses are so amazingly equipped with different functions, it is surprising. An elephant’s nose (trunk) and upper lip weighs, on average, 300 lbs. (136 kgs.), and can take up and hold more than one gallon (3.7 lt.) of water at a time for spraying on another animal’s back. The trunk is also strong enough to pick up large logs, yet functional enough to gather thin blades to eat. In addition, an elephant can raise its trunk high in the air to smell if any predators are in the area. Another function that I grin at, is that elephants weighing so heavy sink to the bottom of a rivers when they try crossing it; however, they use their noses as snorkels when crossing a deep river by lifting their noses high above the water line to breathe.

Dogs have an astounding sense of smell; they are one of the animals with the best sense of smell. Dogs can pick up odors in concentrations of one part per trillion. A book called Scent, published by veterinarian Dr. Hugo Verbruggen, and dog trainer Milo D. Pearsall, mentions an experiment that illustrates how well dogs can pick up odors. It mentions that if a single gram of butyric acid, a chemical constituent in human perspiration, were released in a ten-story building and evaporated, a human being might be able to smell the odor for a very short moment by sniffing at a window. A dog, in comparison though, would be able to pick up the odor in the same amount if it were to spread over a city the size of Philadelphia anywhere within the city up to an altitude of three hundred feet (90 meters).4 It also mentions that if humans had only ten percent of a dog’s smelling ability that dogs have, we would have a totally different understanding of our world we.

Camels are desert animals that have been created with special channels that can hold moisture in the dry desert. Also, when the wind blows, a camel can close its nostrils to keep out the sand and dust.

Ants also fascinate me. These tiny creatures use odors to identify if an ant belongs in their colony or if it is an intruder. In addition, when an ant dies a certain odor is released, and other ants in the colony will carry the dead ant to a burial site. An experiment has been performed by scientists that placed this “dead” odor on a healthy ant. Although the marked ant was struggling and kept returning to the nest, other ants constantly carried this marked ant to their burial grounds in the belief that it was dead.5

Taste: Taste and smell are chemical senses. Although scientists can only guess what an animal can and does taste, they do know that animals have different taste buds. Taste buds are made up of tiny taste cells that enable us to taste sweet, sour, bitter, and salty substances. Mammals have the most taste buds, while birds have the fewest; insects have none. However, these animals and insects have special taste cells to detect the certain foods they need for survival.

Touch: All animals have a sense of touch. Many scientists believe that touch is the most important sense. The sense of touch indicates if we are hurt, cold, hot, and much more. Blind and visually impaired individuals rely on the feeling of touch to read Braille. Many animals and insects, however, have built-in antennas that help them avoid too close physical contact with other insects and help them detect food and surrounding conditions.

A blowfly (any fly that deposits its eggs on meat or wounds), for instance, uses its antennas to determine if the wind conditions are best for flying. If the wind is blowing too fast, the blowfly will wait until the wind calms down. This is an important feature, for this insect would not be able to survive flying in a strong wind.

Many animals and insects rely on the sensing of vibrations. For example, a spider relies on the shaking of its web to understand if it has caught food or if another spider has come to mate. A spider feels the vibrations through its long legs by waiting at the edge of its web. It is understood that when a spider returns to its web, it shakes the web to see how it vibrates. The results will let it know if something has been caught.

It is also interesting that some animals seek and show affection through touch, just like human beings do. Cats, dogs, monkeys, seals, and lions are some examples that show love and affection. As a cat owner, it is interesting to see the understanding of affection through touch. They enjoy being petted and seek for affection. A question asked by people, who have a cat or have been near a cat, is that why do cats purr and what causes this noise. Scientists believe that purring is produced by blood in a large vein in the chest that vibrates and is then magnified by air in the windpipe.6 Someone petting a cat can actually feel this vibration. Cats usually purr when they are happy or when being shown affection. However, the cat’s purr is more than a sign of content. Kittens, unlike many animals, are born blind and deaf. The vibration of their mother’s purring is a physical sign that the kittens can feel; it is somewhat of a signal to the kittens to be close to the mother and nurse. Also, the kittens’ purr is a signal back to the mother that their kittens are getting their milk and are healthy. This is an extraordinary survival mechanism.

“Super-natural senses”: There are several sensing abilities that scientists can not explain or categorize due to the several unique senses possessed by several animals and insects. Among them is the mosquito’s remarkable sense of heat that leads them to their victims. Female mosquitoes follow have several, however, the most remarkable one is that they can sense temperature differences of less than 1/250th of a degree Fahrenheit. This amazing sense of temperature enables them to land on the warmest and best vein of blood for food.

Another sense scientists have difficulty explaining is that birds, bees, and some other creatures have magnetism. Just as a compass has a magnetic needle that points north, these creatures have natural magnets that help them migrate and find food by using the earth’s magnetic field. They have natural tiny crystals of iron oxide, or also called magnetite, made front iron found in their blood. This enables these adorable creations to still find their way even when they can not see the sun.

People for many years have been puzzled how animals can sense an earthquake before its any “obvious” signs. One of the explanations is that animals, as described throughout the article, have unique and even, in some cases, better senses than human beings. Therefore, they are able to pick up on vibrations, sounds, and odors that humans physically can not, which may indicate to them that a disaster is about to occur.

A final note: Besides their senses, animals have a uniqueness and wondrous superiority over other animals the other with their physical attributes and characteristics. For example, some animals see or hear better than other animals, and some animals have unique physical attributes that other animals do not have. If you look at the beautiful and majestic kingdom of animals, you will find that each animal has a different beauty and awe that deserves much appreciation. This is a component that makes this world a fascinating and perfectly created one.

REFERENCES

1. The National Wildlife Federation “What do Do Animals See, Hear, Smell, and Feel?” (1990).
2. Ibid
3. Ibid
4. Roger A Caras, A Dog is Listening. Summit Books. 1992.
5. The National Wildlife Federation” What do Do Animals See, Hear, Smell, and Feel?” (1990).
6. Arline Bleecker, “Why Do Cats Sulk?” Globe Digests. 1998.