There is a “real” world, out there, but we do not perceive it directly. It is assembled by the sensory and nervous systems of each individual animal, and it is assembled differently by every one of them. What we perceive is a construct. Every animal’s perception of the world, constructed by its evolved sensory apparatus and nervous system to take

‘The great and terrible thing about humankind is simply this: we will always do what we are capable of.’

A philosopher of the twentieth century, Paul Virilio, said: ‘When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane you also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution. Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress.’ I think

In the forests of South America, hunters sleep faceup so the jaguar will see them as beings capable of looking back at him, and leave them alone. If they sleep facedown, the jaguar will mistake them for helpless prey and attack them. We must understand not only how we organize and perceive the world, but how the world sees us. We must understand

Death is a part of us. It shapes our bodies from the very beginning. You might think your fingers are formed by the division of cells in the womb—but that is not the case. Fingers are chiseled out of a paddle of flesh by the death of cells, the same way David was chiseled by his sculptor from a block of marble. Without death, life would have no

What matters to the blind, deaf tick is the presence of butyric acid. For the black ghost knifefish, it’s electrical fields. For the bat, what matters is air-compression waves. This is the animal’s umwelt: that portion of the world their sensory apparatus and nervous system allow them to sense. It is the only portion of the world that “matters” to

Communication is not what sets humans apart. All life communicates, and at a level sufficient to its survival. Animal and even plant communications are, in fact, highly sophisticated. But what makes humans different is symbols—letters and words that can be arranged in the self-referential sets we call language. Using symbols, we can detach

This octopus would have to overcome that. It would need to find a way to communicate that was digital—I mean digital like our number system or our alphabet.

“The great and terrible thing about humankind is simply this: we will always do what we are capable of.”