• Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
    58·
    8 hours ago

    It literally might - the stereo audio sensing gets more vertical data (that the brain can combine with visual data into a more fully 3D understanding of things).

    It’s the same how you (I mean eg cats) move your head from side to side while judging the distances or shapes of the objects slightly further away.
    Just a sensor adjustment to literally receive more data on the subject/object from various pov-s.

    They wouldn’t do this for far away objects.

  • Pennomi@lemmy.worldEnglish
    93·
    11 hours ago

    Apparently the head tilt is a sound thing that helps them locate the position of sounds above/below them better. Humans are built different so we don’t need to do that to locate the source.

    Or so I’ve heard. A real scientist is welcome to correct me.

    • ch00f@lemmy.world
      171·
      10 hours ago

      Humans have the same issue, we just don’t have that same instinct for whatever reason.

      Location is determined by the time-of-flight difference in the sound wave between each ear. So if something hits your left ear first, you know that it’s coming from the left.

      You can’t do that when things are above/below.

      More: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oai7HUqncAA

      • bleistift2@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        15·
        8 hours ago

        You can’t do that when things are above/below.

        You obviously have never been near a tree with a singing bird in it. You can definitely tell that the sound comes from above. That’s because the shape of the outer portion of the ear somehow funnels the sound in a way that makes it possible for the brain to determine the origin of the sound.

      • sga@lemmings.worldEnglish
        42·
        10 hours ago

        I am going to make a guess here, but I think humans might not even require this, we are farely unique (not unique per se, but it is rare i think (just primate family)) in our height class, higher than most quadraped stuff, but not high enough to be of the size of trees, so most noise either comes from above us, or below us, or at same height as us, and mostly heights coming from our own height usually would not be scary. And at small enough distances, we could easily tell source of noise from above or below (purely by being practised to know what source could produce what intensity at what distance) and at a longer distance where the difference would be small (relative to each other) we as may as well consider them same and treeat them same. All hypothesising, but I would guess we would loose the need quickly enough, considering tilting would mess up with our usuall visual processing, which we do much better, it would not be useful to hurt our better skill for something not useful

        • ch00f@lemmy.world
          1·
          10 hours ago

          Yeah, growing up on the plains of Africa and being generally larger than birds means that most important things don’t come from above you.

    • Deme@sopuli.xyz
      63·
      9 hours ago

      Not only does it help with hearing, but with sight as well. Two eyes looking horizontally at an object produce a dataset for the brain to process, but the depth perception is constrained to working in the horizontal plane. Tilting the head expands this into the third dimension, providing a lot more for the brain to work with.

      • deranger@sh.itjust.works
        5·
        7 hours ago

        Huh? That doesn’t make sense. Depth perception is in the Z (depth) axis. It’s neither in the X (horizontal) or Y (vertical) axis. You get the exact same stereo vision depth perception regardless of the orientation of your eyes.

        Imagine a triangle with your eyes and the subject at a distance as the points. This triangle can be rotated around the long axis without changing anything. Tilting your head does nothing for visual depth perception.

        • Deme@sopuli.xyz
          1·
          3 hours ago

          For singular dots in space your argument would be valid, but real objects are often more complicated. If the eyes can’t reliably lock onto the same spot along the X-axis due to a repeating pattern or a complete lack of detail along said axis, tilting the head shifts the whole situation and allows the eyes to zero in on a fixed point to perceive depth. An extreme example: If you look at two horizontal featureless lines (offering no details along their length to lock onto, brushed metal railings for example) positioned one behind the other, running perpendicular to the field of view in the direction of the X-axis. The only way for depth perception to work here is to tilt the head to introduce a difference along the Y-axis. Repeating patterns with the right spacing (e.g. grids, lattices) in that same plane can also confuse depth perception, in which case the head tilt often helps.

          Another (marginal) benefit of head tilting is the fact that as the head rotates, the eyes physically move, possibly revealing additional detail that may have been obstructed from the previous vantage points. All this for a much lower energy expenditure than the whole animal moving itself.

          Oh and one thing that popped into mind from personal experience as I am writing this: In darkness tilting the head helps discern between shapes that are just lingering on your retinas after looking at a brighter thing earlier (rotates along with the eyes) vs. dim things that might actually be there right now (stays in the same orientation relative to the surroundings).

          • deranger@sh.itjust.works
            2·
            1 hour ago

            Your vision is always a singular dot in space, unless you have amblyopia or something else causing your eyes to point in different directions. Even if you’re looking at a featureless line, your eyes are fixed on a single point in space. It’s not like one eye is looking somewhere different from the other eye. The triangle still exists.

            There is no difference to stereo vision depth perception regardless of how the view points are oriented in the X and Y axis. The practical proof for this is in rangefinders; neither simple consumer stereo rangefinders nor complicated military stereo rangefinders, such as those found on battleships or antiaircraft guns, are oriented in the Y axis to gain some advantage. There’s no need. The triangle is the same regardless of X-Y orientation.

            I see what you’re saying about the example of two completely featureless lines oriented exactly along the X axis in a completely featureless space, as this wouldn’t work with a coincidence rangefinder, but this is an edge case and not something you’d encounter in real life. You’d also have other cues for depth perception beyond just stereopsis.

    • w3dd1e@lemm.ee
      3·
      9 hours ago

      You’re right! I have a dog breed that is prone to deafness and he had a BAER hearing test. He has partial deafness in one ear, so he always tilts the other side up for hearing. It helps them hear better, and use the ear flaps to “trap” the sound.

  • makyo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    8 hours ago

    I turn my right ear closer to whatever it is, not sure why though. It could be that I hear better or that’s my dominant side somehow but I do it even when what I don’t understand is something other than audible info.

  • IninewCrow@lemmy.caEnglish
    11·
    11 hours ago

    It’s like moving stuff around in a box to make things work or appear differently … if your head is upright and you can’t think past whatever it is you’re looking at, you tilt 45 degrees and all the brain mush slops over to one side of your skull and the ideas and thoughts get reset … if you’re still confused, you tilt 45 degrees in the other direction to reset the brain mush again … and you keep doing that to the brain mush until something starts making sense.