There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in ANYONE’s philosophy, to borrow a phrase from the bard. Don’t believe Hamlet (or me)? Check out An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, by Ed Yong. Disclaimer: This is not light reading. I got it for Christmas, and I’m about halfway through (in October.) Parts of it are dauntingly dense. But other parts are mind-boggling, inspiring, moving, and, literally, life changing. (More on that in a moment.)
The book is about the “Umwelts” of other creatures. Umwelt is a German word for “environment,” but Yong uses it in the sense of the part of an animal’s surroundings that it can sense and experience: its perceptual environment. Other animals have a huge array of sensory organs and capabilities for sensory experiences. As Henry Beston writes, “In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.” And, Yong adds, colors we cannot see, breezes we cannot perceive, temperature shifts we cannot feel, and on and on.
A few of my favorite New (to me) Things about the Living World:
~Owls’ ears are at 2 o’clock and 8 o’clock on either side of their heads. This offset allows owls to locate sounds not only on a horizontal axis, as humans do, but also on a vertical axis. In fact, a great gray owl can strike a lemming inside its snow-covered tunnel, by sound alone.
~Cats have vibration-sensitive mechanoreceptors in the muscles of their bellies. When stalking, slinking low to the ground, they may be sensing the vibrations of potential prey.
~Caterpillars can use hairs on their midsection to sense the air movement produced by bees, and react by freezing, throwing up, or falling to the ground. So, simply by moving the air around the plants they visit, bees can reduce the amount of harm that hungry caterpillars might do them. As Yong notes, there are few insects more important to plant life than bees and caterpillars.
~Mosquitoes find lavender very irritating. (This is the life-changing part.) I was delighted to read this, because I am quite reactive to mosquito bites, mosquitoes love to bite me, and, coincidentally, I’d planted several clumps of lavender in our yard this summer. I’d also recently seen some lavender-scented lotion at a store. Although it has not, historically, been my favorite scent, I went back and bought several tubes. The combined effect of fresh lavender in the yard and lavender lotion on me? I got exactly ONE mosquito bite this whole summer! Wow! (And, yes, lavender is my new favorite scent.)
I am deeply moved by this reading. As we humans mourn the damage to the living systems of Earth that we have created with our resource consumption, we also (still) seem to know only a fraction of all there is to know about our planet. There is so much we’re only beginning to imagine about the realities of other beings.
The infinite resourcefulness of creation is cause for hope. And perhaps inspiration. In grasping the immensity of our world, perhaps we also can take a wider view. Perhaps we can see how humanity can rejoin the intricate yet constantly evolving dance of interrelationship that powers life on Earth.
If you are a patient reader, I highly recommend dipping into An Immense World. If you happen to live in Whatcom County, consider Village Books, our local indie bookstore, as a source. Who knows what mind-altering, life-changing fact you might find?
I’m very glad to know that about lavender! This reminds me of something I learned the other day: that humans can’t actually sense whether something is “wet” or not, we can only judge that by temperature and texture, but other animals DO have an ability to sense wetness as it’s own thing
How interesting! I wonder if I will find that, about “wet” sensing, as I read on in “An Immense World”? Perhaps animals with fur need that capability because they are somewhat insulated from temperature and texture?