How Animals Perceive the World | Hacker News Reader

How Animals Perceive the World

theatlantic.com

80 pointspseudolus17 comments

Unfortunate editorial choice for the title, as this is really about how noise and light pollution disrupt the natural world. As these topics seem to be popular here, probably the original title would have been a better choice:

> It appears in the July/August 2022 print edition with the headline “Our Blinding, Blaring World.”

It’s an important article too. Some of the documented effects are startling. For example, how noise affects scrub-jays which affects the distribution of piñon pines which affects everything else. I wish we had a more examples and a better understanding of how the effects of these pollutants ripple through entire ecosystems, as I imagine the effects are even more extensive than we realize.

The article only briefly touches on an aspect I think is under-appreciated, that we are part of the natural world, and sensory pollution deeply affects us as well.

> By then, about 83 percent of people—including more than 99 percent of Americans and Europeans—were under light-polluted skies. More than a third of humanity, and almost 80 percent of North Americans, can no longer see the Milky Way.

And we are well aware of the deleterious effects of noise pollution on our health, both physical and mental. Imagine if we didn’t live in such a polluted sensory environment and had more of a connection with the natural world we so rely on. Maybe then we would be more motivated to really address the climate, environmental, and biodiversity crises we are living through.

> Sensory pollution is the pollution of disconnection. It detaches us from the cosmos.

I whole-heartedly agree with your points, but I have to acknowledge that their "How Animals Perceive the World" title pulled me into the article from a completely different perspective and I have been thinking about this world more from the point of view of other life forms - especially those whose perceptions we cannot experience (ultrasonic echo-location, "detect(ing) the currents produced by objects moving in the water with whiskerlike hairs", odorants and advanced olfactory senses, electric field guidance, and obviously all the discussed acoustic sensitivities). It really made me appreciate how all life forms are "equally" evolved to select for their own given niche and how all life forms are struggling to continue to evolve as those niches rapidly change. Including humans. Plus I learned a whole new understanding of the word 'Umwelt'!

>Every creature lives within its own sensory bubble, but only humans have the capacity to appreciate the experiences of other species.

Haven't read the whole article but... again, the only humans can do X argument.

My crow friends do appreciate my experiences. I'm sure other species can do it too. The Umwelt barrier seem to be defined on 1909 knowledge. We keep underestimating life intelligence.

Relatedly, I learned recently that on our current best metric of animal intelligence by brain size, humans don’t even come in first place - dolphins do. Maybe Douglas Adams was right.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_n...

How did you make contact with crows? They gather on some trees near my building and throw the occasional loud party. I've tried leaving food for them a couple of times, and they swoop around a bit, but I don't know if they recognize me.

If you insist on leaving food regularly they will start eating it and coming near you. They do recognize you, they don't trust you yet. They love unsalted peanuts. I've been visiting 3-4 neighboring groups of crows over the years. It took time but now they are confident and will follow me within their borders, some even eat from my hand. Nice way to relax, take a walk, and learn to observe. Can't recommend enough.

For riffing against "only humans can do X" arguments, I recommend The Myth of Human Supremecy by Derrick Jensen.

There are probably more succinct surveys available.

I initially thought this was going to be an article on animal perception, and of course I was curious to read a human's attempt to confidently describe the perception of completely different being.

Not what I got, but I did get the classic dismissal of the abilities of practically all other life:

"but only humans have the capacity to appreciate the experiences of other species"

Related discussion from 6 days ago:

"Ways that animals perceive the world" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31688701 (75 points | 34 comments)

The photographs on this article are insane! Thank you for sharing.

“Animal minds are simple, and therefore sharp. Animals never spend time dividing experience into little bits and speculating about all the bits they've missed. The whole panoply of the universe has been neatly expressed to them as things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. This frees the mind from unnecessary thoughts and gives it a cutting edge where it matters. Your normal animal, in fact, never tries to walk and chew gum at the same time."

— Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

Relevant:

What Is It Like to Be a Bat?: Thomas Nagel

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Nagel_Bat.pdf

This gets a nod in the last paragraph

> …a mantis shrimp will never smell the way a dog can, and a dog will never understand what it is like to be a bat.

The concept of Umwalt was new to me and I appreciate that

You might enjoy Frans de Waal's excellent book, *Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are." https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780393353662 Quite a fun read, too.

As much as I dislike "human noise pollution" myself, these things read like the authors have never been in the woods themselves. I've been in heavy industry factories and on construction sites that were quieter than the deep woods during cicada season. The normal noises of a subtropical forest are more varied and not as intense, usually, as "city noise" but its far from the quiet, peaceful and idyllic tranquility that is commonly assumed.

How do humans perceive the world?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com