The programs about nature that I watched in my childhood were more like didactic lessons; instead, modern versions have the bombast of summer blockbusters. In part, it is due to technological advances. Wild creatures are difficult to film, and when footage on file is short and sparse, the narrative must inject the intrigue and humor that the visual element lacks. But new generations of sophisticated cameras can follow cheetahs at ground level as they run, zoom in to watch bears romp on inaccessible hillsides, and capture close-up images of everything from wasps to whales. Nature documentaries can be cinematic.

One drawback is that, in the process, the peculiarities of animal life have been squeezed into the circular gap of human narratives. When it becomes easier to record animals, it is no longer enough to just film them; They must have stories. They must battle and overcome problems. They must have quests, conflicts, and even character arcs.

Dramatic events are always appreciated in nature shows: the very David Attenborough He once told me, after filming a series on reptiles and amphibians, that frogs “really do almost nothing until they reproduce, and snakes do almost nothing until they kill.” That way of thinking has become an obsession, and the dramas of nature have become melodramas. Consequently, we have a subtle form of anthropomorphism, in which we are only interested in animals if they satisfy familiar human tropes of violence, sex, companionship, perseverance. Instead of doing this, we could try looking at them through their own eyes.

A tick’s Umwelt is limited to the feel of the air, the scent emanating from the skin, and the warmth of warm blood. The human Umwelt is much broader, but it does not include the electric fields that sharks and platypuses know, nor the infrared radiation that rattlesnakes and vampire bats track.

In 1909, the biologist Jakob von Uexküll he noted that each animal exists in its own unique perceptual world. These stimuli define what Uexküll designates Umwelt, the little piece of reality tailored for that animal. A tick’s Umwelt is limited to the feel of the air, the scent emanating from the skin, and the warmth of warm blood. The human Umwelt is much broader, but it doesn’t include the electric fields that sharks and platypuses know, nor the infrared radiation that rattlesnakes and vampire bats track.

The concept of Umwelt is one of the deepest and most beautiful in biology. It tells us that the universal nature of our subjective experience is an illusion, and that we perceive only a fraction of what is possible to feel around us. It’s almost the opposite of dramatic: it reveals that animals may be doing extraordinary things, even when they appear to be doing nothing.

When I take my dog ​​for a walk, I see a mockingbird perched on streetlights. With eyes on the sides of his head, he practically has a 360-degree field of vision. His eyes also have four types of cells capable of perceiving color, while we have three. The hearing of a mockingbird is also different from ours: it is so fast that, when it imitates the song of other birds, it accurately captures notes that pass our ears so quickly that we cannot distinguish them.

I watch the mockingbird for a minute or so and in that time it sings a little and takes flight. What else do you need to do? The basic state of your existence is magical. The simplest functions of seeing, hearing and feeling are spectacular without the need for any show.

It is difficult, and even in some cases impossible, to capture these sensory worlds. Our own senses limit us, they create a permanent division between our Umwelt and that of other animals. Technology can help bridge that chasm, but there will always be a gap. To cross it, we need what psychologist Alexandra Horowitz calls “an informed imaginative leap.” No one can show me what another Umwelt is like; I have to work to imagine it.

I could almost say that it has now become too easy to watch nature documentaries, it’s like being passively swept away by the torrent of a set of vivid images, eyes open, jaw agape, but brain relaxed. In contrast, when I think of other Umwelt, I feel my mind flex, and I feel joy that I have attempted at least one impossible task. In these small acts of empathy, I further understand other animals, not as feathered or furry prototypes of my life, but as wonderful and unique beings in their own right, and as keys to understanding the true vastness of the world.