Beneath a glorious sky, stippled lightly with clouds, I stopped. Silvery ribbons, gossamer thin, were trailing through the air. Lit up by the sun, they looked like threads of platinum, as if spun by a legion of fairies. But not quite. These were spiders hanging on threads of silk.
In a process called ballooning, the arachnid climbs to the tip of a leaf where, sensing the earth’s magnetic fields, it raises its abdomen and begins to produce a line of silk. The thread catches the magnetic field and suddenly the spider is airborne, clinging to its silk like a parachute, entirely at the whims of the elements. Perilous as it is, ballooning allows them to travel much further than their eight little legs could carry them.
I know this because I recently read An Immense World by Ed Yong, which explored the various sensory worlds of the animal kingdom. I would recommend it; it was a fascinating glimpse into other dimensions, like entering the zoological matrix. As well as the ballooning spiders, I learnt that owls have one ear higher than the other so they can locate the sound of a rustling mouse vertically as well as horizontally. That fish use specialised organs to gauge the pressure of the water around them. That the star-nosed mole can detect food at lightning speed with the finger-like protrusions at the end of its nose — and in complete darkness.
We are imprisoned, in a way, by our own senses.
Thinking beyond our bodies requires effort and imagination. But we can try
It is easy to think we humans are bland in comparison, with our two eyes, limited hearing, et cetera. But Yong showed me that this is not the way to think. Each creature has evolved its abilities for survival, and that includes us. Humans are excellent at judging depth simply with our eyes, for instance, and we can discern hundreds if not thousands of different flavours. The reason we cannot sense magnetic fields like the spider, detect heat like a mosquito or pick out the intricacies of a finch’s song is because we do not need to.
Most of all, the book made me think. That we are imprisoned, in a way, by our own senses. We cannot ever know what it is like to experience ultraviolet light in the way a bumblebee does because we do not have the anatomy to do so. Thinking beyond our bodies requires effort and imagination. But we can try. To me, at least, ultraviolet light is a bright, glowing white, ever so slightly purple, like the edge of a light sabre. It tastes like very diluted blue Powerade. And it is irresistible if you are a bumblebee. I may be wrong — who knows. But I will think twice the next time I am planting flowers.
Easier to imagine, perhaps, is the idea that a dog experiences its world primarily through smell. Odours are full of information. If he had his way, his daily walk would take him through dirty alleyways and into a butcher’s shop, via dustbins, rose gardens, piss-soaked lampposts and the backside of every dog he passed. He would not bother with greenery and riverside vistas. Yong, considerately, says he now takes his for two walks a day: one led by his human eyes, and another by the wet, sniffling canine nose.
If we are bound by our eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin, then surely we are all too often bound by our thoughts. We make sense of the world — of others — through our own beliefs, our own standards. We are guilty of looking at others and thinking they must want the same things as us, that they must have the same motivations. Indeed, most people want health, happiness, security. I am sure the dog wants this, too, even if he does not know it. But the older I get, and the more I observe, the more I realise that humans are not as simple as the dogs — as obvious as that sounds.
We pay a price for having such remarkable brains — the same brain that allows me to contemplate the tinge of ultraviolet and then express it to you with a complex language. The price we pay is that we may never be able to truly understand it. Even agreeing on the colour of something is difficult. What is mauve, exactly? How might colourblind people describe a strawberry when they struggle to discern red from green? Visually impaired people will have an entirely different interpretation, too. Suddenly even something as simple as ‘red’ is not what you thought it was.
We cannot assume something is true of a person just because they, too, are a person. We cannot ever truly know the inner workings of another’s mind.
This is why we have to use our imaginations. To stop, to think. To wonder how the world looks and smells and feels to them, and how it might have brought them to where they are standing now. What inspires and motivates them. It will always be different to us.
It is this I am trying to do more. For various reasons I will not look at 2023 through the fondest of eyes, human or otherwise. Instead, I will try and be optimistic for the year ahead. To keep using my imagination. Eight legs and a ride on the earth’s magnetic fields might be hard to imagine, but another pair of eyes feels easier.