Imagine standing in your garden. A bumblebee whizzes overhead too quickly to follow, a sparrow darts from the fence to the trees, and a snail lugs itself across the garden stones. Assume for a moment that each of these animals has a stream of experience – that the world for them unfolds over time. How does the world appear from their perspective? In short, do they experience time in a similar way to us?

Scientific studies have already shown that humans, bees, sparrows and snails all differ in sensitivity to wavelengths of light and frequencies of sound – that is, we see and hear differently. But in a recent review, our research group asked whether time, that stream of experience, unfolds in the same way for us as it does for the bee, the sparrow, or the snail?

If we can understand how different species assemble perceptual contents – the information coming in from their senses – we can better understand how each carves up the world in time. We use the term “timescape” to describe this: the way a stream of perception is stitched together, updated, and structured as it unfolds. To investigate whether different animal species inhabit different timescapes, one strategy is to examine how animals perceive temporal illusions.

One example is the auditory continuity illusion. Imagine listening to an audio clip in which parts of........

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