>Sensory compensation IS real.  I just read an article in the paper the
>jist of which is that the brain can rewire itself, suggesting is it far
>more adaptable and flexible than originally thought.  For example, a blind
>person who is reading braille uses the part of the visual cortex that is
>normally used when a sighted person reads.  Many other examples were given
>of how different parts of the brain can take on functions usually not
>processed there.
 
Sensory compensation is mostly a cop-out--a way for folks who aren't
disabled to feel better by saying that blind people have better hearing.
Yes, the brain can "rewire" itself, but neural pathways are pretty solid
by age 4 or 5, especially for things like linguistics, which relates to
hearing for most people... which is part of why most people who don't hear
foreign languages when they're very young literally cannot distinguish
between some vowel or consonant sounds.  If sensory compensation were
really what it's presented as, all blind ferrets would have better than
average hearing, all deaf ferrets could see as well as humans...
 
The truth is, what we call "sensory compensation" is basically just the
ability to adapt, something we humans are known for--among other animals,
including most mustelids, many of which are scavengers or predators
depending on the situation.  (What's the scientific word for a creature who
only eats food that's star-shaped and crunchy?)  It's not that blind people
have *better* hearing, just that they tend to pay more attention to what
they hear.  I work closely with a deaf person.  She doesn't have *better*
eyesight, she just notices details more.  And yes, the brain gets used
to this, and comes to almost instinctively rely on the sense that works
better.  Many animals--like humans and ferrets, for two--are incredibly
trainable and adaptable.  If you keep us in darkness long enough, we
learn to hear, to smell, to feel.  If you plug our ears, we learn to feel
vibrations and see tiny movements.  But this is NOT automatic.  A person
who develops a sensory disability after early childhood has to actively
work to learn to rely on other senses.  My guess is that the same would
apply to ferrets, although, since they tend to take life one minute at a
time and not worry too much about what's going on as long as they feel safe
and secure, most of them would probably have an easier transition and worry
less about what they had "lost."
 
>So a blind deaf ferret could have a better sense of smell, as it had more
>of its brain available for that function.  But I can't imagine a ferret
>would be very easy to train to find mines, unless they smelled like
>raisins, and as others mentioned, how the heck would the ferret let you
>know it had found anything?
 
A blind, deaf ferret might be more reliant on its sense of smell, which
would seem to make its sense of smell better.  It might use more brain
resources to interpret what its nose told it.  But considering that scent
is a primary sense for these guys anyway, I don't think it's likely that
there would be a huge difference in nose ability.  :-)  In short--don't
expect your deaf ferret to be able to see you from farther away--or to pay
closer attention to you!
 
And I think we all agree that the whole ferrets-finding-landmines thing is
a pretty long shot.  I was very relieved to read Zen's post about the
matter.  Hope it was really a grad student being somewhat irrational.  I,
too, thought of mines that smelled like raisins.  :-)
 
They should work on training parakeets (which have excellent senses of
smell, are easy to train and intelligent, weigh a couple of ounces, and
are very cheap to buy) to find landmines... :-)  (Kidding, folks, kidding...
I just like the image of someone sending out a small flock of trained birds
over a field and expecting results.)
 
Jen and the Crazy Business
[Posted in FML issue 2855]