Are you referring to sensing body heat of other animals? That's a long wave IR emission, ~8000 nm and up. Some animals do indeed sense that and it is quite useful at night. This laser, and the paper I linked to, are operating with much shorter IR wavelengths (~800 to 1550 nm). This spectral region overwhelmingly comes from sunlight under natural conditions, and its intensity drops sharply at night like the ordinary visible range.