The pace of life

I recently filmed a bird at 120 frames per second. I decided to slow it down to 24 frames a second to see what it looked like. That’s one-fifth normal speed. That’s slowed down considerably. What did it look like?

It looked like a normal pace for human life. It didn’t look too odd at all. Birds could happily live at one-fifth speed and they would have normal reactions, just like us.

When a Sanderling rushes by in a dizzy rush, I think about that one-fifth experiment.

Have you ever looked a bird, like a Crow in the road, and hoped that it would fly before your car hit it? And noticed how they always seem to play ‘chicken’ and leave it until the last minute? It’s because they have plenty of time at their pace of life to get out of the way. It’s not the last minute to them, it’s the last hour, and they have all the time in the world to get out of the way.

We are slow, lumbering giants in comparison.