Have you ever thought about how animals see, hear, or even smell the world around them? The idea that every creature has its own unique sensory experience is what Umwelt is all about. Even though we share the same physical environment, our experiences are radically different. Realizing this brings a whole new sense of wonder to life.

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What is Umwelt?

The term Umwelt was first introduced by biologist Jakob von Uexküll. It refers to the unique sensory world that every living thing experiences. While humans mainly rely on sight and sound, animals may experience ultraviolet light, magnetic fields, or temperature changes in ways we’ll never understand. Each creature has its own Umwelt—its own bubble of perception.

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A Glimpse Through An Immense World

Ed Yong’s book, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, dives deep into these sensory worlds. He explores how animals use their senses in ways that go beyond our wildest imagination.

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Take dolphins, for example. Dolphins use echolocation, sending out clicks and listening for echoes to “see” the world through sound. They don’t need eyes to sense their surroundings. For them, the world is a map of sound waves bouncing back from every surface.

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Jumping spiders, on the other hand, have eight eyes, each specialized to detect different kinds of light. They can see more of the world than we can, in a mix of colors and details we can’t even picture. While we see with two eyes, their vision is like a multi-lens camera processing different angles at once.

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Another part of the book that stuck with me was how dogs experience smell. To us, a scent is fleeting, but for a dog, it’s like reading a novel of information. They can even tell how long ago something was there!

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Birds provide another fascinating example. While we might just enjoy their songs, they use these sounds to navigate complex social systems and detect changes in the weather.

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How Umwelt Sparked My Curiosity and Wonder

Learning about Umwelt has given me a fresh perspective on everyday life. It’s made me stop and think about everything I don’t see, hear, or sense. But it’s also made me appreciate the senses that I do get to enjoy in this lifetime.

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Ed Yong’s book really sparked my curiosity about what’s happening around me that I’m unaware of, and it’s made me feel a deeper empathy for our fellow creatures. It also taught me about the dangers of anthropomorphism (the attribution of human traits or emotions to non-human entities, like animals or objects)—reminding me that we’re just one of many equals in the natural world. Now, when I see a bird in my garden, I wonder what it’s really seeing. When a cat lounges in the same room as me, I think about how its experience of the space must be entirely different. And when a butterfly lands on a flower, I imagine how it sees the world—patterns on petals that I’ll never get to see, but that are vital to its world.

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"If you start thinking about the umwelt of other animals, you understand that nature's magnificence is all around us. It's in our backyards, it's in our gardens, it's in the bodies of some of the most familiar creatures around us, my dog, the pigeons on the street," Yong says. "It just makes things that felt very familiar feel newly wondrous."

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This curiosity makes the ordinary feel extraordinary. Even a simple walk in the park feels more alive—and that’s a feeling I hope to hold onto for a long time.

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Want to Bring More Wonder into Your Life? Go Look for It! 👀

If you want to bring more wonder and joy into your everyday life, staying curious is a great way to start. There’s magic in exploring what we don’t fully understand. That’s why I highly recommend reading An Immense World—it’ll open your eyes to the hidden wonders all around us. Here’s the link to Amazon (not sponsored).

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PS. Want more book tips? Check out My Favorites here—I love reading and update this page quite frequently.

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Till the next one,

Stefanie