Is Our Physics the only Physics?

We have a specific way of perceiving things. For example, our mind perceives the world through a four-dimensional model: 3 spatial dimensions, and one (unidirectional) time dimension. But is this the only way the world around us can be perceived?

It is clear that, as long as there is a one-to-one mapping between one representation and another, any two representations of any piece of information are equivalent. For example, it does not matter whether we store a position in polar or Cartesian coordinates - because we have a one-to-one map from one to the other.

So, imagine that we meet an alien species. Would they necessarily have a unit of distance? Could it be that, instead of (x, y, z, t), they perceive (tx, ty, tz, t^3)? Their unit of measurement would then have distance and time entangled together. They might say, "walk for 125 cube-seconds" (equivalent to us saying "walk for 5 seconds"). Our statement "the car is 10 kilometres away and the time now is 125 seconds" would translate to "the car is 50 km-seconds away". Is there a logical reason why every species should perceive in the same units that we do? Maybe not!

This needn't be restricted just to distance and time. A species might perceive taste and colour together, or even distance confounded with emotional state. "That's red-sweet, my friend, but it's happy-far!"