Wednesday, April 11, 2012

"Living in Alien Worlds," moderated by Carl Zimmer, this Friday in New York

Animals experience their worlds in ways we cannot understand—with senses we have lost long ago or never had. They define their worlds with exquisite senses of smell and hearing, with vision that sees what we can't imagine, or with responses to chemical or electromagnetic properties that we are insensitive to. By these yard sticks, many animals are far smarter than we are.
“Living in Alien Worlds” will be a panel discussion this Friday (April 13th) evening at Hunter College West in Manhattan, organized by Thinking Animals and moderated by Carl Zimmer.

I’m sad I can’t make it to New York for the event, but I hope they record it and make it available online! For the fortunate people in the area who can attend, it seems tickets are $25 ($35 for the reception to follow). Probably best to reserve online as soon as possible in case they sell out.

This looks like a great series of talks. I wish I’d known about them sooner. The last one apparently featured Marc Bekoff, whose The Emotional Lives of Animals I just read.



(I’ll probably have more to say about it in the near future.)

And this panel includes Katy Payne, interviewed in this piece:



Speaking of books, the topic of this discussion brings to mind Jacob von Uexküll’s A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans, which I’ve been debating buying for what seems like forever.



If anyone’s read it, let me know what you think.

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