In topic: "How accurate do you think your own sensory and cognitive portrait of the world is?"

Tuesday, August 12th, 2025, 1:17 PM26 days ago

I'm reading "An Immense World" by Ed Jong right now, which is all about animal senses and their "Umwelt," or the world it is possible for them to percieve. Yeah, we humans are pretty solid all-rounders, but so many animals can sense stuff we can't. Like, we don't have ultrasonic sonar with sub-milimeter precision, tetrachromatic vision that can see a whole extra dimension of colours, God-tier scent-following skills, the ability to talk to each other by vibrating the ground, and a dozen other things. Other end of the scale, many animals percieve much less - like ticks, which can detect the smell, taste and warmth of passing mammals but not much else. Even most fellow mammals see a different world to us - instead of our forwards vision with good depth perception, cows see a 360 degree panorama with a "focal point" that stretches all around the horizon.

"This is StuckUnderHell, nor am I out of it." - Mephistopheles


Bandersnatch Wrangler