scholarly journals Von Uexküll Revisited: Addressing Human Biases in the Study of Animal Perception

2019 ◽  
Vol 59 (6) ◽  
pp. 1451-1462 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleanor M Caves ◽  
Stephen Nowicki ◽  
Sönke Johnsen
Keyword(s):  
Animal Behavior ◽  
Sensory Information ◽  
Sensory Ecology ◽  
Sensory Systems ◽  
Sensory Physiology ◽  
Sensory Modalities ◽  
Jakob Von Uexküll ◽  
Von Uexküll ◽  
Animal Perception ◽  
Behavioral Assays

AbstractMore than 100 years ago, the biologist Jakob von Uexküll suggested that, because sensory systems are diverse, animals likely inhabit different sensory worlds (umwelten) than we do. Since von Uexküll, work across sensory modalities has confirmed that animals sometimes perceive sensory information that humans cannot, and it is now well-established that one must account for this fact when studying an animal’s behavior. We are less adept, however, at recognizing cases in which non-human animals may not detect or perceive stimuli the same way we do, which is our focus here. In particular, we discuss three ways in which our own perception can result in misinformed hypotheses about the function of various stimuli. In particular, we may (1) make untested assumptions about how sensory information is perceived, based on how we perceive or measure it, (2) attribute undue significance to stimuli that we perceive as complex or striking, and (3) assume that animals divide the sensory world in the same way that we as scientists do. We discuss each of these biases and provide examples of cases where animals cannot perceive or are not attending to stimuli in the same way that we do, and how this may lead us to mistaken assumptions. Because what an animal perceives affects its behavior, we argue that these biases are especially important for researchers in sensory ecology, cognition, and animal behavior and communication to consider. We suggest that studying animal umwelten requires integrative approaches that combine knowledge of sensory physiology with behavioral assays.

scholarly journals Backward spatial perception can be augmented through a novel visual-to-auditory sensory substitution algorithm

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ophir Netzer ◽  
Benedetta Heimler ◽  
Amir Shur ◽  
Tomer Behor ◽  
Amir Amedi
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Perception ◽  
Sensory Information ◽  
Sensory Systems ◽  
Sensory Substitution ◽  
Sensory Augmentation ◽  
Visual Spatial ◽  
Sensory Modalities ◽  
Human Perceptions ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Spatial Fields

AbstractCan humans extend and augment their natural perceptions during adulthood? Here, we address this fascinating question by investigating the extent to which it is possible to successfully augment visual spatial perception to include the backward spatial field (a region where humans are naturally blind) via other sensory modalities (i.e., audition). We thus developed a sensory-substitution algorithm, the “Topo-Speech” which conveys identity of objects through language, and their exact locations via vocal-sound manipulations, namely two key features of visual spatial perception. Using two different groups of blindfolded sighted participants, we tested the efficacy of this algorithm to successfully convey location of objects in the forward or backward spatial fields following ~ 10 min of training. Results showed that blindfolded sighted adults successfully used the Topo-Speech to locate objects on a 3 × 3 grid either positioned in front of them (forward condition), or behind their back (backward condition). Crucially, performances in the two conditions were entirely comparable. This suggests that novel spatial sensory information conveyed via our existing sensory systems can be successfully encoded to extend/augment human perceptions. The implications of these results are discussed in relation to spatial perception, sensory augmentation and sensory rehabilitation.

From Senses to Sensory Ecology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham R. Martin
Keyword(s):  
Sensory Information ◽  
Sensory Ecology ◽  
Sensory Systems ◽  
Environmental Challenges ◽  
Human World ◽  
Species Ecology

The sensory information available to birds differs markedly between species and it is important to make sense of this diversity in the context of the species’ ecology and behaviour. It is clear that sensory information varies in relation to the environmental challenges that birds face in conducting their lives in different environments, especially with respect to the tasks associated with foraging. Applying knowledge of sensory systems and sensory capacities to questions about how birds are able to carry out particular tasks, especially in environments where information is restricted, provides valuable insights into how bird behaviour is governed by information. By delving into the details of these different sensory worlds, and by exploring their links with specific environments and tasks, we can gain valuable insights into how our human world is also a product of specialised sensory information, which has also evolved for the control of particular tasks in specific types of environmental situations.

scholarly journals Fast-moving bat ears create informative Doppler shifts

2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (25) ◽  
pp. 12270-12274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoyan Yin ◽  
Rolf Müller
Keyword(s):  
Fast Moving ◽  
Sensory Information ◽  
Extreme Case ◽  
Sensory Systems ◽  
Sensory Physiology ◽  
Perception Threshold ◽  
Time Frequency ◽  
Doppler Shifts ◽  
Functional Relevance ◽  
Pass Through

Many animals have evolved adept sensory systems that enable dexterous mobility in complex environments. Echolocating bats hunting in dense vegetation represent an extreme case of this, where all necessary information about the environment must pass through a parsimonious channel of pulsed, 1D echo signals. We have investigated whether certain bats (rhinolophids and hipposiderids) actively create Doppler shifts with their pinnae to encode additional sensory information. Our results show that the bats’ active pinna motions are a source of Doppler shifts that have all attributes required for a functional relevance: (i) the Doppler shifts produced were several times larger than the reported perception threshold; (ii) the motions of the fastest moving pinna portions were oriented to maximize the Doppler shifts for echoes returning from the emission direction, indicating a possible evolutionary optimization; (iii) pinna motions coincided with echo reception; (iv) Doppler-shifted signals from the fast-moving pinna portion entered the ear canal of a biomimetic pinna model; and (v) the time-frequency Doppler shift signatures were found to encode target direction in an orderly fashion. These results indicate that instead of avoiding or suppressing all self-produced Doppler shifts, rhinolophid and hipposiderid bats actively create Doppler shifts with their own pinnae. These bats could hence make use of a previously unknown nonlinear mechanism for the encoding of sensory information, based on Doppler signatures. Such a mechanism could be a source for the discovery of sensing principles not only in sensory physiology but also in the engineering of sensory systems.

Variation in the Sensory Space of Three-spined Stickleback Populations

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert B Mobley ◽  
Janette W Boughman
Keyword(s):  
Lateral Line ◽  
Gasterosteus Aculeatus ◽  
Habitat Type ◽  
Sensory Ecology ◽  
Sensory Systems ◽  
Multiple Modalities ◽  
Sensory Modalities ◽  
Types Of Information ◽  
Olfactory Tissue ◽  
Peripheral Sensory

Synopsis The peripheral sensory systems, whose morphological attributes help determine the acquisition of distinct types of information, provide a means to quantitatively compare multiple modalities of a species’ sensory ecology. We used morphological metrics to characterize multiple sensory modalities—the visual, olfactory, and mechanosensory lateral line sensory systems—for Gasterosteus aculeatus, the three-spined stickleback, to compare how sensory systems vary in animals that evolve in different ecological conditions. We hypothesized that the dimensions of sensory organs and correlations among sensory systems vary in populations adapted to marine and freshwater environments, and have diverged further among freshwater lake-dwelling populations. Our results showed that among environments, fish differed in which senses are relatively elaborated or reduced. When controlling for body length, littoral fish had larger eyes, more neuromasts, and smaller olfactory tissue area than pelagic or marine populations. We also found differences in the direction and magnitude of correlations among sensory systems for populations even within the same habitat type. Our data suggest that populations take different trajectories in how visual, olfactory, and lateral line systems respond to their environment. For the populations we studied, sensory modalities do not conform in a predictable way to the ecological categories we assigned.

scholarly journals Neurophysiology goes wild: from exploring sensory coding in sound proof rooms to natural environments

2021 ◽  
Vol 207 (3) ◽  
pp. 303-319
Author(s):  
Heiner Römer
Keyword(s):  
Sensory System ◽  
Sensory Systems ◽  
Natural Environments ◽  
Sensory Coding ◽  
Noise Levels ◽  
Sensory Physiology ◽  
Sound Localisation ◽  
Physical Environments ◽  
History Of ◽  
Adaptive Behaviours

AbstractTo perform adaptive behaviours, animals have to establish a representation of the physical “outside” world. How these representations are created by sensory systems is a central issue in sensory physiology. This review addresses the history of experimental approaches toward ideas about sensory coding, using the relatively simple auditory system of acoustic insects. I will discuss the empirical evidence in support of Barlow’s “efficient coding hypothesis”, which argues that the coding properties of neurons undergo specific adaptations that allow insects to detect biologically important acoustic stimuli. This hypothesis opposes the view that the sensory systems of receivers are biased as a result of their phylogeny, which finally determine whether a sound stimulus elicits a behavioural response. Acoustic signals are often transmitted over considerable distances in complex physical environments with high noise levels, resulting in degradation of the temporal pattern of stimuli, unpredictable attenuation, reduced signal-to-noise levels, and degradation of cues used for sound localisation. Thus, a more naturalistic view of sensory coding must be taken, since the signals as broadcast by signallers are rarely equivalent to the effective stimuli encoded by the sensory system of receivers. The consequences of the environmental conditions for sensory coding are discussed.

scholarly journals Zoognosis: When Animal Knowledges Go Viral. Laura Jean Mackay’s The Animals in That Country, Contagion, Becoming-Animal, and the Politics of Predation.

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-56
Author(s):  
Tessa Laird
Keyword(s):  
Speculative Fiction ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Poetic Language ◽  
Animal Abuse ◽  
Jakob Von Uexküll ◽  
Von Uexküll

This paper proposes a creative neologism: zoognosis, with an added g, to indicate that knowledges can be transmitted virally from animals to humans. If so, what are the animals trying to tell us? Laura Jean Mackay’s The Animals in That Country (2020) provides an opportunity to find out. Mackay’s prescient novel was written before, but published during, the COVID-19 pandemic, and is about a ‘zooflu’ that enables the infected to understand animals. The author has forged a poetic language based on animal sensory perceptions, what ethologist Jakob von Uexküll termed Umwelten. In doing so Mackay effects a ‘becoming-animal’ of the text, reintroducing readers to their own animality. Mackay’s ‘perspectivism’ enables us to see from the point-of-view of non-human animals, forcing a reckoning with animal abuse and extractive lifeways. While her speculative fiction is bleak, it offers tools for attunement and thinking-with non-human others.

scholarly journals Vindicación de Uexküll en Merleau-Ponty, Simondon y Deleuze

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (21) ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Manuel Heredia
Keyword(s):  
Jakob Von Uexküll ◽  
Von Uexküll

El propósito de este artículo es analizar las lecturas producidas por Merleau-Ponty, Simondon y Deleuze a propósito de la biología teórica de Jakob von Uexküll. La hipótesis que se pondrá en juego consiste en sostener que, frente a las interpretaciones críticas de que fuera objeto en la antropología filosófica alemana (1928-1944), las lecturas de los tres filósofos franceses operan una revalorización post-antropocéntrica de la teoría uexkülliana, y lo hacen desde horizontes teóricos ontológicos y genéticos.

Sensory Substitution Devices as Advanced Sensory Tools

2018 ◽  
pp. 188-204
Author(s):  
Thomas D. Wright ◽  
Jamie Ward
Keyword(s):  
Nervous System ◽  
Sensory Information ◽  
Sensory Substitution ◽  
Considerable Effort ◽  
Conceptual Space ◽  
System P ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Sensory Modalities ◽  
Magnetic Sense ◽  
Definition Of

There has been considerable effort devoted towards understanding sensory substitution devices in terms of their relationship to canonical sensory modalities. The approach taken in this essay is rather different, although complementary, in that we seek to define a broad conceptual space of ‘sensory tools’ in which sensory substitution devices can be situated. Such devices range from telescopes, to cochlear implants, to attempts to create a magnetic sense. One feature of these devices is that they operate at the level of ‘raw’ sensory information. As such, systems such as Braille which operate at a symbolic/conceptual level do not count as a sensory tool (or a sensory substitution device) and nor would a device such as CCTV which, although capturing raw sensory information, would not meet a conventional definition of a tool. With this approach, we hope to avoid the circularity inherent in previous attempts at defining sensory substitution and provide a better starting point to explore the effects of sensory tools, more generally, on the functioning of the nervous system.

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