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Having recently revisited Ed Yong’s book, An Immense World (which I highly recommend by the way!) I found myself thinking about the concept of umwelt, and the environment that surrounds us here at Londolozi.
Umwelt: /ˈʊmvɛlt/ a German word for “environment”, defines a creature’s unique perceptual world, shaped by its sensory capabilities and environment, emphasizing that no single objective reality exists but rather a multitude of different experiences.
I thought I would try to paint a picture of how various creatures might perceive their surroundings, often completely different from how we, as humans, do when exploring the land from a game drive vehicle…
A golden light spills across the rolling crests as the sun rises, yet it is not only the light that defines this world. Our human eye sees the horizon in shades of oranges and pinks, but to a different creature, the world awakening is a symphony of vibrations, a tapestry of scents, a map of sound.
You and I, sitting on the Land Rover, see the Londolozi bushveld as we understand it, but…
To the herd of impala staring at us as we drive by, their ears swivel like miniature radar dishes, enjoying the fragile peace of the pre-dawn stillness. Every rustle of leaves, every distant snap of a twig is meticulously catalogued. They listen to the pulsating network of sounds with vigilance, painting a panorama of potential threats.
The chacma baboons begin their boisterous awakening along the Sand River. The tentative calls of a Grey Go-Away bird echo. A Crested Francolin’s rhythmic, metallic call pierces the cool morning air. These are not just noises but vital data, an indicator of the changing landscape of safety as everyone begins another day.
The Crested Francolin’s call changes to a sudden harsh, sharp, and high-pitched wheeze, and the tree squirrel chimes in with its sharp chattering shrill, signalling the presence of a nearby leopard. This broadcast of potential danger ripples through the impala herd’s Umwelt, and they stop grazing as their awareness heightens.
Emerging from the riverbank, a leopard walks with quiet confidence, scent-marking its territory along the edge of the thickets. Its world is a masterpiece of shadows and light and scent, a tapestry of intricate patterns and smells invisible to our human senses. The scat or scent of a rival. The fleeting pheromones of the dominant male. The acrid scent of a lurking hyena.
As the leopard moves through the bushes, it’s a creature of stealth and silence to our ears, but a walking vibration to the ground-dwelling dung beetle that’s just re-emerged from its state of torpor (hibernation) as it sits in a fresh pile of elephant dung.
Not far from the trail of fresh dung continues a herd of elephants, experiencing the start of the day at an extraordinary level of depth. In their own silent power, their feet pick up the rumbling communication of the rest of the herd several miles away, as well as seismic vibrational waves travelling through the ground signalling the distant approach of an incoming summer storm. Through their feet, they felt the presence of our approaching Land Rover long before we got a view of these giants.
This was a common occurrence as the Plains Camp Males marched in the direction of the two other males. Flehmen Grimacing and picking up their scent.
A few kilometres away, a male lion also feels the earth pulse with the low rumble of our safari vehicle in the distance, a sound wave so deep it is imperceptible to us, yet where we are defines the edge of his territory. Like the leopard, he moves through a landscape not of sight, but one primarily of scent: each bush and termite mound a living newsfeed. The lion’s world is a vast, invisible library of olfactory information.
Two of the big five in one scene, and yet, how they perceive their sensory worlds is completely different.
Meanwhile, as the sun’s heat warms our cheeks, we look up, where a bateleur eagle begins its wide, sweeping circles of flight in the sky. Its Umwelt is one of vast, unbounded space; an aerial map where thermal currents are as tangible as mountain ranges. It is not scanning the landscape for movement as we might, but for the chemical signature of death, a scent carried on the wind guiding it to its next meal – much like the vultures would. From its lofty vantage, the patchwork of bushes below unfolds not as a jumble of greens and browns but rather a mosaic of potential meals relying on its telescopic vision.
We stop at a nearby waterhole, and a cacophony of sound erupts from the overhanging branches, creating a choir of bird calls. We hear a joyful melody, but to each individual species of bird, each note is a precise dialect – a song to attract a mate or warn away a competitor or threat.
Below the bird nests, a hippo submerges from the water. Their world is one of cool, aqueous refuge; a dense medium that muffles the sharp sounds of the land. As the hippo emerges, its ears pick up the grunts and bellows of the rest of its pod, a complex social language that defines their aquatic territory.
As we move through this awakening landscape, consider this: what we perceive is but a sliver of the truth. The dawn chorus of an abundance of birds, the distant roar of a lion echoing across the crests, the musty scent of an elephant bull carried with the morning breeze, these are fragments of an immense, interconnected world, each understood and experienced uniquely by its inhabitants. By quieting our own internal chatter and opening ourselves to these myriad perceptions, we begin to step, however briefly, into the extraordinary Umwelt of Londolozi.
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Kate Tennick
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