How Animals Live
Discover how the animal kingdom really works, from the alien sensory worlds creatures inhabit to the hidden logic behind their physical forms. Learn to decode the signals, survival tactics, and social contracts that govern life in the wild.
Like Duolingo, but for How Animals Live. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
A short one: 12 levels across 2 sections, about 24 minutes end to end, roughly 5 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Perceiving and Navigating the World and Signals, Strategies, and Societies. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in How Animals Live
- Each animal species evolves to detect only the specific sensory signals vital to its survival, filtering out the rest
- What humans perceive as total reality is actually just our own limited sensory window
- Flowers often have ultraviolet bullseyes and runway patterns that guide pollinating bees but are invisible to humans
- Pit vipers have specialized facial pit organs that detect infrared heat radiating from warm-blooded prey, even in complete darkness
- Human eyes are tuned only to visible light and cannot perceive ultraviolet or thermal infrared waves
- Low-frequency infrasonic sounds travel much farther through air and dense vegetation without getting scattered or blocked
- Elephants produce deep rumbles below human hearing range to communicate across miles
- High-frequency sounds scatter easily and are better suited for close-range echolocation, like bats dodging branches
- Ants and other insects lay chemical pheromone trails that lead colony members directly to food
- Predators and mammals deposit scent marks (like urine or glandular secretions) to claim territory and signal reproductive status
- Chemical cues allow animals to distinguish nestmates and family from strangers
- Fish possess a lateral line system running along their bodies that senses water pressure changes and ripples
- As a fish swims, it pushes water ahead of it, and the way that water compresses or bounces off nearby obstacles is detected before contact
- Whiskers on mammals function similarly in air or water by detecting tiny movements and vibrations in the surrounding medium
- Forward-facing eyes provide overlapping fields of view, creating depth perception essential for judging pounce and chase distances
- Eyes on the sides of the skull provide a wide panoramic field of view, helping prey animals scan for predators with few blind spots
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives How Animals Live the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
When you look out across the world, what are your senses actually taking in?
Get it right to open this lesson and 11 more in the app.
Where How Animals Live takes you
- 1
Perceiving and Navigating the World
- Tuning In to Animal Senses
- Reading Bodies as Survival Tools
- 2
Signals, Strategies, and Societies
- Interpreting Animal Communication
- The Logic of Animal Societies
2 sections · 4 units · 12 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
Tomo is in ChatGPT
Tomo is also a ChatGPT plugin: the same playable courses, built and played inside your chat.
Add Tomo to ChatGPT- What to ask
- “Make me a Tomo course on black holes.” “Turn this chat into a Tomo course.”
- What you get
- Quick questions with instant feedback, hearts and stars, ready to play in about a minute.
- Where it goes
- No sign-up to start. Connect your Tomo account and your streak carries on in the app.
You pick the voice
How Animals Live is taught in the Pirate style: arr, learning be an adventure!. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start How Animals Live today.
Download Tomo, search How Animals Live, and play your first lesson in under a minute.