There’s something quite fantastic about beach-roving birds like sandpipers.

This cute, speckled wading bird wanders shorelines, foraging for its food (usually small invertebrates).

And their name is such because they poke their pipe-like beak into the sand to search for their dinner.

However, they don’t just search randomly: in fact, studies show that they have a kind of ‘remote touch’ sense that allows them to detect the presence of their prey even when it’s hidden beneath grains of sand.

It’s a nifty power to have, but it’s something that few humans could even imagine – or so you might think.

But according to a recent study from researchers at Queen Mary University of London, humans actually possess a similar ability, you just don’t know it yet.

In their study, which was recently published by IEEE Xplore, the researchers asked participants to move their fingers gently through sand to find a hidden cube, and flag when they’d detected the cube.

But notably, they had to detect the cube before they’d physically touched it – something that staggeringly, the participants were able to do.

These results are surprising for many reasons, the first of which being the fact that sandpipers’ beaks are specialised for this kind of detection, whereas human hands aren’t – or at least, we didn’t know they were.

But the study proves just how sensitive our hands are, with our skin being able to tell – via the displacements of grains of sand – when such an object is nearby. And as the report noted, humans had a 70.7% precision rate when it came to this test. A robot arm, which was trained to carry out the same tests, detected the cube earlier but with only a 40% precision, or accuracy rate.

In demonstrating a new way in which humans perceive the world, the researchers opened up a new avenue for further study and innovation, as QMU’s Zhengqi Chen explained in a statement:

“The discovery opens possibilities for designing tools and assistive technologies that extend human tactile perception. These insights could inform the development of advanced robots capable of delicate operations, for example locating archaeological artifacts without damage, or exploring sandy or granular terrains such as Martian soil or ocean floors. More broadly, this research paves the way for touch-based systems that make hidden or hazardous exploration safer, smarter, and more effective.”

Who knew we were so talented?

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