If that's true, I'd expect they just perceive time more slowly than we do which is why they're able to appear so much more quick. I still agree they've got a lot going on in those brains I just think this aspect of it is interesting!
With that in mind, it would make a lot of sense if time perception scaled with body size. If you are a big elephant signals need to travel very far, and your muscles have to overcome a lot of inertia. If you can't react quickly anyways you don't need to perceive time as quickly. A fly has little inertia, fast signal times because of the short distances, fast processing because there just are fewer neurons, so there is more advantage to perceiving time more quickly
The secret to killing flies is that they have to fly up first before they can fly away, so you (slowly) put your hands in front and behind them and "clap" them. They feel the air and lift off, right into the center of your oncoming hands.
Don’t know about you, but over the years I’ve met a lot of humans that can’t obviously outthink a higher-end chicken.
This is what I'm responding to. I don't know how to reconcile your two sentences, but no problem.