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adaptation is not always possible

1/31/2025

"Animals can adapt, either by changing their behavior over an individual lifetime or by evolving new behaviors over many generations. But adaptation is not always possible. Species with slow lives and long generations can't evolve quickly enough to keep pace with levels of light and noise pollution that double every few decades. Creatures that have already been confined to narrow corners of shrinking habitats can't just up and leave. Those that rely on specialized senses can't just retune their entire Umwelt. Coping with sensory pollution isn't a simple matter of habituation."

From An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, Ed Yong

another animal

1/30/2025

"We are closer than ever to understanding what it is like to be another animal, but we have made it harder than ever for other animals to be."

From An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, Ed Yong

invisible bulldozer

1/29/2025

"Sounds can travel over long distances, at all times of day, and through solid obstacles. These qualities make them excellent stimuli for animals but also pollutants par excellence. The concept of pollution calls forth images of chemicals billowing from smokestacks, scum-covered rivers, and other visible signs of degradation. But noise can degrade habitats that look otherwise idyllic, and make otherwise livable places unlivable. It can act as an invisible bulldozer that pushes animals out of their normal ranges. And where will they go? More than 83 percent of the continental United States lies within a kilometer of a road."

From An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, Ed Yong

the inescapable cost of low sensitivity

1/28/2025

"Our eyes are among the sharpest in the animal kingdom, but their high resolution comes with the inescapable cost of low sensitivity. Unlike most mammals, our vision fails us at night, and our culture reflects our diurnal Umwelt. Light has come to symbolize safety, progress, knowledge, hope, and good. Darkness epitomizes danger, stagnation, ignorance, despair, and evil. From campfires to computer screens, we have craved more light, not less. It is jarring for us to think of light as a pollutant, but it becomes one when it creeps into times and places where it doesn't belong."

From An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, Ed Yong

stimuli of our own making

1/27/2025

"Instead of stepping into the Umwelten of other animals, we have forced them to live in ours by barraging them with stimuli of our own making. We have filled the night with light, the silence with noise, and the soil and water with unfamiliar molecules."

From An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, Ed Yong

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adaptation is not always possible

another animal

invisible bulldozer

the inescapable cost of low sensitivity

stimuli of our own making

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