We often assume that animals share the world as we see it - theirs is much more mysterious.
Humans can function in complex societies because we are able to empathise with one-another. We interpret the behaviour of another person by imagining what we would be feeling. It is not helpful when we carry this ability over into the world of animals.
Imagining that animals are feeling as we would in a similar situation is known as anthropomorphism, and a view of the world of nature from the human perspective is called an anthropocentric view.
We automatically imagine that all animals see the world as we do, and nothing could be further from the truth. Dogs are often considered our closest animal companions, but we cannot begin to see the world as they see it. Theirs is a world of smells and they cannot distinguish colours, ours is colourful but our smell-world would look very ‘black and white’ to them! When we come to the other species there are much greater differences.
Vision
We are able to see a certain range of wavelengths of what we call light. Many invertebrates have eyes that respond to wavelengths outside our range. For example bees can see much more detail on the flowers they visit than we can, and Blue Tits see different colours from us when one looks at another. Mantis Shrimps see a vastly different world from the one we are aware of, and it is impossible for us to imagine what their world might look like.
Seeing
We cannot help but think that eyes and vision are the same as ‘seeing’ in the human way. We forget that our eyes feed information to a massive brain and that we are ‘conscious’. I do not want to get into the thorny issue of which other animals might be ‘conscious’ in the same way as us, but most people would accept that a flea is probably not aware of what he is doing. Mantis Shrimps have massive eyes and incredible vision, but all the processing is done in the eye itself and the brain only functions to co-ordinate this information with the efficient thumping of prey! Do they ‘see’ their prey or simply respond appropriately?
Other Senses
All fish have a ‘lateral line system’ which allows them to be aware of vibrations in the water, and some, such as the Electric Eel, have receptors that allow them to ‘feel’ electric currents. Many snakes and the blood-sucking insects can ‘see’ heat. Birds can probably ‘see’ magnetic fields …. the list of animal senses that we do not possess is very large indeed.
When we try to understand how animals behave we must step away from what is natural to us and try to avoid being anthropomorphic.
see also 'animal senses'
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