like sonar and radar systems, infra red heat sensors and sensors of electrical activity much before Man millions of years ago to find their way and prey :.
The Duck-billed Platypus uses his snout
to detect electric current in its prey’s muscles enabling it to find food with its eyes, ears and the nostrils closed, in river water where he hunts
The Sperm whales bounce sound off objects
and analyse echoes to locate prey like Dolphins but their echolocation system is more powerful and so strong that their ear splitting salvos of sound energy stun or kill their prey acting like loud gunshots .
The virtually blind Electric eels uses electricity
to find its way and prey- it produces low level discharges, which create an electric field around its entire body, and are of several hundred volts which shock and stun or kill prey . 21 Dolphins ‘see’ with sound their way and their prey such as a shoal of fish, by a highly sophisticated echolocation system which indicates the size, shape and structure of a target and whether prey is calm or frightened .
In case of Bats also the echolocation system
is so accurate that it can tell size, texture, speed, and direction of prey with their radar like scanning system . . The Owls use feathers on their face to collect sounds and focus them on their ears to detect and pinpoint prey accurately even in complete darkness for mid night feasts.
Sharks have evolved a remarkable array of seven prey-
detection systems enabling it to home in on its prey 2 km away , smell blood from 0.5 km , pick up changes of pressure produced by moving prey at 100 m, see its prey 25m away even in dim light, detect minute electric currents produced by heart or muscles and locate fishes, even those buried in sand . Sharks Skates and Rays have in fact Ampullae of Lorenzi in addition to the famous Lateral line system of fishes . 22 ( ii ) VISUAL SYSTEMS
Nature has, over several millennia, evolved super sight
in many animals creating eyes of diverse shapes and sizes developing sophisticated visual equipment in many animals :
Eight eyes make Jumping spider a great all-rounder
Its six small and two large eyes give it almost 360º vision and it uses the small ones to detect movement and the large ones for precise tracking of prey with its sharp vision .
Big eyed aerial predators-the birds of prey
have a binocular three dimensional vision enabling them to spot small animals far far away; , Indeed some like Eurasian Kestrel having a UV vision can spot a prey from a height of 1.6 km and African martial Eagle can swoop down on a prey 6 km away .
Chameleon can see in all directions at once from a pair
of rotating eyes, operating independently, and pinpoint prey with its binocular vision as also look for prey and watch for the predators simultaneously . 23 Similarly Opossum Shrimp of a coral reef virtually carries a pair of binoculars as each of its two compound eyes has hundreds of tiny facets, which give it a honeycomb view of the world ,and a large lens which points backward while small lenses look forward in moving shrimps . .