Public Lecture 'Sensing the World - An Animal's Perspective'

The University of Bristol's Senses and Sensations research group is delighted to announce an exciting public lecture delivered by two academics working to examine animal senses in different ways and from different angles. In this event, Mark Paterson – who is currently a Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Bristol – will explore the histories of experiments on animals to understand the sense of touch. These ideas will be placed in conversation with the work of Nathan Morehouse (IRiS, University of Cincinnati) and his own examinations of animal senses, in which he focuses on vision in spiders. Thinking across different senses, species, times and places, the work of these two scholars will illuminate our understanding of the senses by drawing our attention away from our human selves, and towards those who sense very differently. 

‘The Evolution of Looking and Seeing: New Insights from Colorful Jumping Spiders’
Nathan Morehouse, Director of Institute for Research on the Senses (IRiS), University of Cincinnati

Insects and spiders face an important challenge: their lifestyles often rely heavily on vision and yet their small size imposes severe spatial constraints on their visual systems. As a result, these tiny animals offer a number of inventive solutions for miniaturized visual sensing, with jumping spiders arguably at the apex. In this seminar, Dr. Morehouse will highlight his recent work to understand how jumping spiders see the world, how these visual capabilities have evolved over time, and how their unusual visual systems have shaped the ways that they communicate with each other. 

A wander through the perceptual worlds of animals and humans: more-than-human sensing
Mark Paterson, University of Pittsburgh, and University of Bristol Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professor

The classic 1934 essay ‘A stroll through the worlds of animals and men’ by Jakob Von Uexküll remains fresh and is continually in print. Why do we return to it? First, it opens out the consideration of the senses beyond our anthropocentric limitations. The perceptual world of other species, based on different arrangements of senses, is endlessly fascinating. Second, it reveals not just the perceptual differences, but what is shared between humans and nonhumans, that is, ‘interanimality’. What happens if we consider a larger ecology of sensing beyond the individual human subject, then, one which accommodates both human and nonhuman perceptual worlds? In the academic world there is interest in what cultural geographers, anthropologists, and others consider a “more-than-human world”, and the multispecies entanglements of Donna Haraway. Meanwhile, there are intriguing artistic experiments that seek to escape the replication of human sensing through digital technologies, looking to nonhuman bodies and experiences for inspiration.

This lecture is open to the University community and to the public.

You must book a ticket to join this event online: Select tickets – Sensing the World - An Animal's Perspective – Zoom (tickettailor.com)