Deer season has arrived and deer are dashing through the woods chasing mates and avoiding humans.
Why don’t they trip?
I’ve only got two feet and unless there’s a trail, I can barely manage a slow walk.
There’s so much to think about. You have to look ahead and pick out a place to step that looks solid and compare it to alternative landing spots. Then you have to calculate where you’ll put your second step and after that, evaluate the likely path beyond.
Plus, consider the position of your body in space. Is there anything you’ll run into or bump your head on—or if you’re a buck—tangle your rack in?
The amount of time you need to take in those visual inputs and make a decision is called visual processing speed.
It turns out deer have a faster visual processor than we have! That’s why they can run without tripping while dodging branches and leaping over obstacles.
Maybe their experience is similar to the way time sometimes seems to slow down in an emergency.
I was walking along a sidewalk one rainy, dark evening, when suddenly, my left foot was rapidly sliding forward while my right foot was sliding backwards. I thought, if this continues, I will be doing the splits and I cannot do the splits! I decided falling on my hip would do less damage. And boom! I landed on my left hip, no harm done.
It doesn’t seem like there would be enough time between starting to fall and hitting the ground to weigh options and make a decision. But somehow, in that moment, there was.
Maybe, what I experienced in that split second is akin to what deer experience all the time when running through the woods—seeing in slow motion. It’s a superpower!
