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One of our three dogs does the head tilt. It is also the one that is not as dumb as dirt.
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.
They wouldn’t do this for far away objects.
LOL, I do! (checking parallax on a rifle scope)
Remembered this vid from a few years ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oai7HUqncAA
I dont really like the dude but the videos are informative.
He is such a fucking american. „Son get a rifle”.
Yeah thats what i meant by “i dont like the dude” he has a military background too so its double cringe sometimes.
And he’s hella religious.
100% voted for trump
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.
Not a scientist, but can confirm, I am built differently than a fox.
Someone downvoted this. Just thought it was funny, carry on.
Can confirm. Am not a Scientist Fox.
Can confirm, and I’m totally not in your hen house eating your chikems! Don’t listen to the loud clucking noises!
Can’t confirm, I’m only a Starfox and do a barrel roll instead.
Thanks Fox. I thought they had me
You’re becoming more like your father
I approve this pedantry because I too am not a scientist 👍
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.
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.
It never works for me.
Adding on to it, the structure/shape of our ears are also unique. So if anyone loses their ear and get an implant, it takes them some time before they can fully get accustomed to it
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.
Maybe we don’t need to, but it feels natural.
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.
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.
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).
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.
Why you looking at me like that?
-I’m expanding you into the third dimension!
Oh, cool?
I do this too. I don’t know why
obviously to get more bloodflow on the smarter side
I do it too. I’m autistic and my kind have some non-standard body language and/or other nonverbal stuff, even varied from individual to individual.
Think I learned it from imitating my dog when I was a kid
Yes, changing your point of view helps understanding things.
God if only some people could understand that
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.
I love how universal it is that humans do it too
