I'm reading a book by the evolutionbiologist Richard Dawkins at the moment (it's for an assignment for school, very readable book though), the blind watchmaker. I'm in the third chapter, and he's given examples of "complicated shapes" (animals). I will not explain here what exactly he means with that, he's using 10 pages to describe it, basically saying that a tree is different from a airplane or a mountain.
The 2nd chapter is all about the echolocation system of bats, actually. It is quite interesting, but it needs some background in biology and physics. Bats, as you probably know, use echos to get to know their surroundings and chase prey. The method they use is what we call the Doppler-effect, meaning outgoing waves return at a higher or lower frequency if the object is moving respectively towards or away from you. So, bats have this enormously complicated system for seeing their surroundings, don't you think?
There is a catch to that question. You see, humans make use of light waves to visualise their surroundings. This way of perception is quite normal to us, so we do it without really thinking about it or doing much effort. We see our surroundings in our own way, we have been accustomed by nature. The thing is, bats have been around for a very long time too, so nature has given them the perfect combination of body aspects to use echolocation. In other words, they use it just as easily as we use our sight. If you think of it, it sounds quite assumable right?
Now, Dawkins goes a little further in this. He takes a step I am eager to follow. He says: "It is possible that the same feeling I experience when I see a flamingo is felt by a bat detecting the flamingo using echolocation."
Whait, what? Is he just saying that echolocation can produce the sensation of colour? He actually is, but not in a way you would expect. He basically says there can be patterns on the wings of those flamingos, which are perceived by echolocation and not by sight. Imagine, bats actually seeing the same things as we are, but in a completely different way! Can you see the world by using echolocation?
There is a part just after that which is quite memorable. He imagines a congress of fully blind bat-like creatures, using echolocation as their primary perception, telling each other about a strange species that has learnt to "see", thus making lightwaves, something the batlike don't use at all, "hearable". They just can't believe a simple creature as men could do that. They imagine lightwaves as "complicated echos".
The big mistake they make here in imagining the possibilities of lightwaves, is that they try to translate the phenomenon to something they can understand, sound, completely disregarding that it's something completely, fundamentally different.
That is just the way we look at bats and other creatures. I hope you see now, that there are different ways of seeing things and we shouldn't take one as better than the other. Their way of perception doesn't fail, our way doesn't fail, they just are fundamentally different and always will be.
Now, the question I've been asking myself is of bigger importance: do elephants think? Or maybe I should ask the question in a different way: in what way do elephants think? Because maybe they do think and we can't understand their way of thinking because it's fundamentally different. Maybe we, as humans, should stop placing ourselves on the very top of nature, thinking we're better than anything, any animal. Maybe we should start to really investigate animals to see how their minds work and how they think. I do really believe that animals, especially the ones with bigger brains, have minds. I, for me, hope it gets proven in my lifetime.
My Opera
