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What’s so special about human perception? The exhibition “Our Senses” at the American Museum of Natural History includes an interactive presentation that explains it all. CreditSam Hodgson for The New York Times
Prepare for sensory overload: Your eyes, ears, nose and, especially, brain are going to be tested at the American Museum of Natural History’s new exhibition, “Our Senses,” a playground that warps what we perceive to be reality.
The exhibition’s 11 interactive galleries help you make sense of your senses. You will probably be familiar with the traditional five senses: sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing. But try not to be thrown off when “Our Senses” adds a sixth — balance. “Our senses are the product of millions of years of evolution,” said Robert DeSalle, the exhibition’s curator. “That millions of years of evolution produces some really strange things in how we perceive the world.”
For example, you see a flower in a different way than a nectar-seeking bee perceives it. For us, the flower’s beauty lies in the pinks, purples, oranges and yellows that crown the center of its blossom. But to the insect, which can see ultraviolet light, those same petals look more like an alluring rave.
“Our Senses” takes you out of your comfort zone — that is, challenging the senses through which you’ve experienced your entire life — and places you in the unknown.
The Brain of the Beholder
In the first showcase, you’re welcomed by a pile of seemingly bland white blocks stacked atop one another. But if you stand in the right spot, you see what was hidden in plain sight: a large eye imprinted across the blocks. It is meant to show the power of the brain, which is the gatekeeper to your interactions with the world — taking in information and determining how to interpret it.
Past the blocks, you reach a room where the lighting alternates between blue, green and red. As the colors cycle through, you’ll notice something odd: What once appeared to be a red lion on the wall transforms into a bunch of green leaves when the lighting turns green. Then blue lights reveal a blue baboon. It reinforces not only how our vision is dependent on light, but also how the range of colors we see differs from that of other animals.
What We Don’t See
An overgrown garden and larger-than-life flowers and insects? This is what the world looks like to a bee. The flowers bathed in ultraviolet light become beacons enticing them to land and pollinate. Here, you might ponder the meaning of “ultraviolet.” We see in a narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum known as visible light. It ranges from the wavelength that produces violet light to the one that produces red. But other wavelengths of light extend far beyond these boundaries.
An infrared viewer mounted on a stalk makes it easier to “see” prey like a snake, which detects body heat. Another device, which resembles a platypus, can pick up electrical signals. When underwater, platypuses find their prey by detecting the electrical signals around it.
Hearing
Smooth jazz beckons in the sound room, where you learn about the more than 15,000 hair cells deep inside your ears. These cells lie within a spiral organ in the inner ear known as the cochlea. You can hear high-pitch noises because they trigger hairs near the outer part of the cochlea. These hairs often die off with age, which is why older people are usually unable to hear these sounds. (Deeper sounds travel farther into the ear.) A device demonstrates this with high-, medium- and low-pitch sounds, which is sure to make children laugh as they test how well (or not so well) their parents and grandparents can hear.
Neural Real Estate
Outside the ear room, a station features the heads of a human, a coyote and a dolphin. If you touch the eyes, a screen shows you what parts of the brain are activated by that sense. But what happens when you move to the nose? The dolphin’s brain goes dormant while the coyote’s looks like a fireworks display. That’s because scientists believe dolphins lack the neural equipment to smell.
Balance
You might get dizzy in the next room, where a swirl of parallel lines tricks the eyes into perceiving bumps and dips where there are none. It is designed to show the importance of balance and how your eyes can disrupt that sense. What you see and what you feel is often in conflict as you move around the room. It’s a pretty trippy experience and worthwhile — though the museum offers a way to bypass it.
Optical Illusions
The entrance to a futuristic-looking room is a wall lined with faces that all belong to Einstein. But the question remains, Are the faces sticking out or pointing in? The infamous blue-and-black dress (or was it white-and-gold?) is also in this room, with a panel explaining why so many people saw its colors differently.
Please Touch
You can place your hands all over the next gallery, which shows how you perceive different textures and temperatures. A display details the different receptors that tell your brain what to feel when wiggling your fingers or gripping something in your hands.
Sweet Smell of Success
Next, you enter a white room that might remind you of “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,” particularly the Wonka Vision scene. In the center, a station displays chocolate cake and brownies. By lifting a flap, you can smell the deliciousness. Other stations may, or may not, contain ingredients that make chocolate. You can try to guess which ones are which. But be careful: While some smell sweet, others are downright offensive.
Enhancing Our Senses
