Imagine standing in your garden. A bumblebee whizzes by, a sparrow darts, a snail lugs itself across stones. Now imagine trying to figure out whether any of them experience time the way you do. That's the premise of a recent review by researchers at the University of Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science, who ask whether the subjective flow of time - what they call the "timescape" - is a universal constant or a bespoke feature for each species.

We already know that different animals perceive light and sound differently; bees see ultraviolet, sparrows hear different frequencies. The question is whether time itself is similarly filtered. To probe this, scientists turn to temporal illusions. Take the auditory continuity illusion: when a sound is replaced by static for about 100 milliseconds and then resumes, our brain "fills in" the missing bits. Squirrels and starlings do the same thing, but their revision windows are shorter - about half as long for starlings and a quarter as long for squirrels. So they may be living in a slightly faster-edited version of reality.

Then there's the flash-lag illusion: when a moving object and a flash appear at the same spot, we perceive the flash as lagging behind. Monkeys experience this too, but with a smaller lag, suggesting their visual processing is more tightly synchronized. Some animals weaponize this effect: butterflies with high-contrast wing patterns create flash-like displays that confuse predators, a defense called motion dazzle.

The researchers also speculate that Indian peacocks may exploit flicker-induced depth in their courtship displays, making their eye-spots appear to float. Beyond academic curiosity, understanding timescapes could help design better infrastructure - like reducing bird collisions with wind turbines or creating temporally sensitive lighting for animal shelters. Because if you're going to share a planet with creatures that experience time differently, you might as well figure out how to avoid annoying them.