Animal senses: how do they perceive the world and what important things can they sense that we cannot?

In the next three lectures I will consider how we and other species experience the world around us and in particular how, as social beings, we and they recognise each other and have a capacity for self-awareness. All this, of course, requires at the outset some appreciation of how the senses work and how they differ between species.

An important starting point in considering the way we and other species sense the world is the simple statement that whatever sense is being used it is merely providing an interpretation of the outside world. In short we do not sense the world as it is but merely as our sense organs interpret it within the limitations of their design. One might even say that our senses provide us with the comforting illusion of experiencing an absolute reality that is, in effect, only relative and highly subjective. This illusion makes it difficult for any individual to appreciate the fact that the same world can, and does, appear very different to other species and indeed even to other individuals of one’s own species.
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  thanks to also not found in nature