World Animal Day

October 4th is World Animal Day. A day dedicated to the mission of making the world a fairer place for all living beings. This year, the focus is on shifting our perspective and reminding ourselves that the consequences of a changing climate and human activity affect not only us but all living creatures.

Too often, we speak of humans, animals, and nature in general as if they were fundamental opposites, when in reality, we too are animals; we rely on the same resources that nature provides. We make decisions with regard only to our own – often very short-term – well-being. But what if we were to look at things differently? From someone else’s perspective.

Umwelt

In 1909, the biologist Jakob von Uexküll introduced the term "Umwelt” to describe a simple phenomenon: different individuals within the same ecosystem respond to different environmental signals. For instance, ticks, which lack sight and hearing, rely on signals such as temperature and the scent of butyric acid, whereas a bat using echolocation relies on airwaves.

For every creature, umwelt constitutes its entire perceptible environment, it is physically incapable of experiencing anything else. Consequently, millions of distinct realities lie outside our own perceptual world, realities that are nonetheless equivalent, each serving as the entire world for the organism inhabiting it.

The concept of umwelt helps us better understand why and how other living beings behave in their environments and allows us to predict their potential actions. Such knowledge is crucial for grasping the true impact of the Anthropocene and for implementing more effective nature conservation measures. Applying the umwelt concept can, for example, help prevent failures in habitat restoration by prompting us to consider what these organisms actually require: specifically, which environmental signals enable them to orient themselves, survive, and ultimately thrive.

Informed Nature Conservation

Human activity can directly affect the environmental signals that other organisms rely on for survival. Anthropogenic niches (such as agricultural land, cities, and industrial zones) exert a negative impact on the population dynamics of many species. The impact of human activity can be direct (e.g., through hunting) or indirect (e.g., by altering habitat quality or extent). However, in certain contexts, human influence can also have positive effects. For instance, by providing birds with nesting opportunities under roof eaves, thereby offering protection from birds of prey.

For many wild animals, humans disrupt information processing and the use of environmental cues. For example, chronic noise interferes with the foraging efficiency of acoustic predators, thereby altering predator-prey dynamics. Artificial light emanating from cities has also been observed to disrupt the nocturnal movement of sea turtles toward the ocean, as the light draws them inland rather than toward the sea.

Thus, habitat restoration and preservation are not merely about whether an animal has sufficient living space, but whether the environment provides the specific signals it requires. It is important to consider whether an individual can hear members of its own species, whether light pollution affects its normal nocturnal behavior, and whether the landscape allows for safe movement.

See the world through their eyes!

By exploring what other animals perceive and why they make certain decisions, we can understand how our behavior, choices, and land development affect them. Only when we truly shift our perspective from "nature versus us" to viewing ourselves as part of nature can we make genuinely informed decisions that benefit everyone in the realm of nature conservation. After all, we all inhabit the same planet, and if we wish to protect it, we must learn to understand worlds that lie beyond our own perception.

| See the world through their eyes

Slogan for the 2026 Animal Protection Day campaign