Umwelt

I do not confess genius.

I do confess curiosity. And a wonder that maybe – just maybe, mind you – what applies in one field of study might just apply in another.

So as I continue to read Frans de Waal’s “Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are,” I have to wonder if there are concepts within the study of the cognitive ethology of animals that could be applied to our interactions with members of our own species.

Particularly compelling is the concept of umwelt, or understanding how animals use their abilities and senses to interact with the world around them. (De Waal defines umwelt in his book as “an organism’s subjective perceptual world.”

For example, African elephants were for a long time considered unaware of their own self because, unlike their Asian counterparts, they appeared unable to recognize themselves in a mirror. Asian elephants could clearly see they’d been marked with paint, and rubbed and probed the marks only after they saw themselves marked in a mirror. The African elephants, by contrast, simply smashed up the mirrors with their tusks and seemed to pay no mind to their paint markings.

It wasn’t until scientists noted that the African elephants always explored new things by prodding them with their tusks that the scientists decided maybe it was their method of experimentation, not the elephants themselves, that was the problem. They fixed the problem by making mirrors the African elephants couldn’t destroy as they explored them with their tusks. Once the exploration was over, the elephants reacted to their paint markings in the same way as their Asian counterparts.

Once scientists understood the African elephants’ umwelt, the experiment netted the same result.

Might we, then, be better off exploring each others’ umwelts, not assuming, for example, that we all perceive the world in the same way, or in a way that hoes any particular political or societal expectation? Smart people are doing just that. (I’ll also make the distinction that understanding another’s umwelt doesn’t mean we have to agree with it, but understanding it sure helps.)

This is probably a blinding flash of the obvious, but hey – y’all should be happy another fella has seen this particular light, thanks to de Waal’s book. Terry Pratchett is right that while there are books of magic and magical books, probably the most magic that comes out of books are the explosions they cause inside the readers’ heads.

And I’ll probably take this all too far.

Or not.



Anyhoo, reading de Waal’s book is certainly eye-opening, and not just for the societal benefits. As an anthropomorphic writer, I’m learning things that I can integrate into the books I’m writing, particularly Doleful Creatures. Getting into the umwelt of each creature I write about as characters can certainly help me shape the worlds I’m creating.

One thing confused me about de Waal’s book – maybe it’s my inability on the first read to get into his umwelt. Who is this book written for? I’m half convinced it’s meant for the layman such as myself, but also for the smaller world of de Waal’s compatriots. If for the layman, I might wish de Waal had written in a less meandering style, though that may be part of his use of English as a second language (I have a Dutch father, and I see some Dutch-to-English coming out in de Waal’s writing, much like I heard from Dad).