Trees of green, red roses too, skies of blue, and clouds of white-these are not part of its wonderful world. These three things constitute its Umwelt. A tick, questing for mammalian blood, cares about body heat, the touch of hair, and the odor of butyric acid that emanates from skin. Like the occupants of our imaginary room, a multitude of creatures could be standing in the same physical space and have completely different Umwelten. Instead, an Umwelt is specifically the part of those surroundings that an animal can sense and experience-its perceptual world. Umwelt comes from the German word for “environment,” but Uexküll didn’t use it simply to refer to an animal’s surroundings. It was defined and popularized by the Baltic-German zoologist Jakob von Uexküll in 1909. “There is a wonderful word for this sensory bubble-Umwelt.
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