Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-2165692-20140425203121/@comment-29458028-20140822135053

I am not actually a physics expert, but I do know some stuff. Let's say a Falmer is 1 meter away and has hearing powerful enough to hear you breathe. The Falmer's nose is a mere 10 cm away from his ears. He breathes with the same loudness as you in terms of decibels. To him, his breathing would be 10^2 = 100 times louder than yours due to the dispersion of sound.

The Falmer can hit accurately from 20 meters away, that is 200^2 = 40000 times softer sounds from the target than his own sounds. Problem is, if he could hear that, his own breathing would kill his brain.

Smell is even worse than hearing as it suffers from the same issue of the inverse square law, diffusion of scents is very slow plus it is non directional. Taste is utterly ridiculous (Snakes "taste" the air with a jacobson's organ, which is why they flick their tounges out, you don't see the falmer do that and that is more smell than taste.), so is touch.

That is the hard science bit covered. There is no plausible scientific explanation that can be accounted for by non magical biology.

Considering magical biology. If the Falmer could say, evolve magically adaptive hearing, it would be much easier to evolve a passive sixth electrostatic sense like those from sharks or restoration powerful enough to restore their eyes, due to evolutionary pressure. Ockhams razor makes the modification of an existing sense silly when compared with regaining what they once had, since the magic involved would be less to restore eyes than adapt ears. Add in the bit about Fourier transforms and hearing is just plain silly without precognition, but if precognition existed, the senses would not even be needed.

Soft science covered as well. Non precise senses based not on light or direct detection is plain silly.