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Science Friday

Expanding Our Umwelt: Understanding Animal Experiences

Science Friday

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

Life Sciences, Wnyc, Science, Earth Sciences, Natural Sciences, Friday

4.55.5K Ratings

🗓️ 1 February 2024

⏱️ 17 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Writing about animals’ sensory experiences in ‘An Immense World’ changed author Ed Yong’s own worldview—and hobbies.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Take a

0:03.7

quick moment to think about your surroundings.

0:05.8

Now I want you to imagine what if you were a cat or a bat?

0:10.3

How would you experience the space you're in differently?

0:13.0

It's about trying to put yourself inside the perspectives of creatures that are very different to you and think about what their lives are like.

0:21.0

You made it through January.

0:22.8

It's Thursday, February 1st, and yes, it's Science Friday.

0:28.9

I'm Scifry producer Charles Burgquist.

0:31.0

This episode, Science Writer at Yang joins guest host Ariel Dum Ross to take us on a tour of animal senses and what thinking about them can teach us about our world.

0:41.0

He's the author of An Immense World, now out in paperback.

0:46.0

Ed, welcome to Science Friday.

0:48.4

Hi, thanks so much for having me.

0:50.0

Thank you for being here. So in each chapter of an immense world you focus on a certain sensory system like sight, smell, pain. You've gotten a lot of feedback I would imagine on your books since it was published. Is there a particular chapter that has

1:05.9

resonated with readers and maybe changed how they understand non-human animals?

1:12.0

Ooh.

1:13.0

So I think that the very first chapter on Smell

1:17.6

always particularly strong support of people

1:20.4

and you know it was intended that way, right right we wanted to come out of the gate strong and I think

1:26.0

smell is very poignant for a few reasons firstly you know it starts with dogs and for people who have dogs like the two of us it really

1:36.2

changes the way you think about this creature that you spend most of your time with. And we really wanted that.

1:43.4

By we, I mean myself, my editor Hillary,

1:45.4

we really wanted to take something that was very familiar

...

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