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How animals perceive time 动物如何感知时间? FLIES live shorter lives than elephants. Of that there is no doubt. But from a flys point ofview, does its life actually seem that much shorter? This, in essence, was the question askedby Kevin Healy of Trinity College, Dublin, in a paper just published in Animal Behaviour. Hisanswer is, possibly not. 苍蝇的寿命比大象短。这是毫无疑问的。但是从苍蝇的角度来说，它的生命真的有那么短暂吗?这是都柏林圣三一学院的Kevin Healy在《动物行为》上发表的论文中提出的问题的本质所在。他的回答可能是否定的。 Subjective experience of time is just thatsubjective. Even individual people, who cancompare notes by talking to one another, cannot know for certain that their own experiencecoincides with that of others. But an objective measure which probably correlates withsubjective experience does exist. It is called the critical flicker-fusion frequency, or CFF,and it is the lowest frequency at which a flickering light appears to be a constant source ofillumination. It measures, in other words, how fast an animals eyes can refresh an imageand thus process information. 对时间的主观经验就是主观的。即使是能与彼此交谈对照时间的人类也不能确定他们跟别人的经验相同。但是，客观的测量与主观的经验确实有关系。这就是所谓的临界闪烁融合频率，简称CFF，这是闪烁的光作为照明固定光源的最低频率。换句话说，测量动物眼睛刷新图像的速度然后处理信息。 | 
