Three Books on Umvelt
Umwelt is a german word that roughly translates as context or environment. In the study of animal behavior, though, it means something more like the lived, experienced environment — from the social, to the familial, to the predatory, and so on. Umvelt includes those bits that, if we applied the word to humans, provide the shape of our behavior with its meaning: the struggles, problems, fears, joys. It’s a generous word that emphasizes the appreciation of the other — whether fellow human or fellow organism — on its own terms, rather than in comparison to to some presumed, external standard. That’s important for good science, because the history of animal behavior is filled with pretty horrible research such as “can they learn (human) language,” “do they have a (human) theory of mind,” do they have a (human) sense of self,” and on and on. Who cares? Really. Who cares? BF Skinner once asserted that the goal of behavioral science…what it meant to understand was prediction and control. Think about that for a moment. Those are the words of an insecure man. The words of an exploitative framing. I’m not saying such a framing doesn’t have its utility and place. But surely a balance must be kept. Wouldn’t we also rather marvel at the tremendous variety of ways in which animals respond to and change the world around them? Why the compunction to compare and insist on a utility that is always relative to ourselves? Or if we must, let’s save our comparative savagery as much as possible for ourselves. Other animals, well, they can’t fight back. So, we should practice our hearing all the more so — let them speak to us and let’s listen. Here are three books that are must reads for those curious about appreciating animals on their own terms and within their own umvelt.
Mostly consists of three sections in which Safina visits field researchers who are studying elephant, wolf, and orca behavior. Beautifully written, Safina does have his opinions, especially about classic laboratory studies of animal behavior!! Let’s just say that he disapproves. As someone who knows that literature well, I’m more sanguine, but it is true that the stances are different. Where many lab approaches disallow a capability until it is “proven,” Safina is more content to approach in the opposite direction. Why not assume that an elephant feels joy in the presence of another or grief at their passing unless there is reason to believe otherwise?
This is one of those books where if you read it, you will leave with a vastly new perspective on an entire spectrum on animals — fishes. That plural is on purpose… read the book! Author, Balcombe, has such a nice evidenced-based writing style in which he presents fact after fact, but in such a non-dense and conversational manner. Do fishes feel pain? Here are some studies that have examined this question. Aren’t the studies clever, and yes, undoubtedly they do. Do fishes engage in cooperative hunting? Yep. Do fishes enjoy being stroked and petted? Mm-hm. The section on cleaner fish mutualism with their client fish “customers” is so-well written, and it’s such a classic system that anyone curious about animal behavior should know of it.
For a long-time student of animal behavior, Frans de Waal’s name is probably most connected with his book Chimpanzee Politics. It was radical at the time for framing observations of chimp behavior in purely anthropomorphic, machiavellian terms. This book is denser than the other two mentioned above, and frames issues through more of an historical lens. De Waal has a writerly style that mixes a bit of memoire with accounts of experiments. In other words, it read a bit like a book written by an older person whose memories are as important as the data at hand. But de Waal knows so very much about primate research and there is some good stuff in here on the newer studies of “intelligence” in birds, insight behavior, tool use, planning, theory of mind, …
