Rats

Apparently most rats survived hurricane Sandy's wrath on New York City's subway tunnels, [averting:evading] the anticipated Ratpocalypse. Rats are good swimmers, and they're also really good at navigating with their whiskers, which flick eight times per second as they survey their environment. Could humans [learn:study] to take advantage of the sort of sensory input? Well to find out, researchers attached a plastic 30 cm-long "[whisker:whistle] " with sensors to the index [fingers:bingos] of blindfolded subjects. And they placed two poles just off to the side and in front of the subject, with one pole slightly closer to the subject. Using their whiskers, the subjects had to judge which pole was [further:more] away. By moving their hands together across the front of them they could feel which hand's whisker touched a pole first, and so they determined which pole was closer to them. During the first day of testing [subjects:topics] could accurately determine a position difference of only 8 cm.