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Every animal has its own sensory world, its own thin slice of the fullness of reality that it can detect.
每一种动物都有它自己的感官世界，它自己能感知到的关于现实的完整碎片。
Evolution has shaped the senses of animals according to their needs, but no animal can sense everything.
生物进化根据动物的需要塑造了它们的感官，但没有任何一种动物能感知到一切。
No animal is perfect at everything.
没有哪种动物是万能的。
There is so much information out there that to be able to detect it all would be an overwhelming experience and also unnecessary.
如果能检测到所有的信息，会让人应接不暇，而且完全没必要。
There's also a cost to the senses.
感官也是有代价的。
Senses don't come for free.
它并非毫无成本。
To build a sense organ and to maintain all the neurons that feed into that sense organ takes up a lot of energy, which is why their senses are so refined and so constrained by their evolutionary needs.
建立一种感官并维持喂养这种感官的神经元需要大量的能量，所以动物们的感官都很精确，并且受到进化需求的限制。
So the word umwelt was popularized and defined by a German zoologist named Jakob von Uexküll in the early 20th century.
因此，20世纪初，德国动物学家雅各布·冯·乌克斯库尔普及并定义了“客观世界（umwelt）”一词。
It comes from the German word for environment, but he meant the animals' sensory environment.
这个词来自德语，意为环境，但他指的是动物的感官环境。
And that's the specific set of sights, smells, textures, and sounds that that animal has access to and that another animal might not.
具体就是一种动物拥有，但另一种动物却没有的视觉、气味、纹理和声音。
When you really think about the senses, you do start to understand the very different kinds of information that those senses offer their owners.
好好想想感官，你就会开始明白这些感官给它们的主人所提供的不同信息。
So we obviously taste with our tongues, but a catfish is essentially a swimming tongue.
显然，我们是用舌头来尝味道的，但鲶鱼就像是个会游泳的舌头。
It has taste buds all over its skin.
它的皮肤上到处都是味蕾。
If you put little pieces of food near the flank of a catfish, it will be able to taste it and turn around and snap it up.
如果你把小块食物放在鲶鱼的侧翼附近，它就能品尝到食物的味道，然后转过身来把它吃掉。
For most animals, taste is about food.
对于大多数动物来说，味觉与食物有关。
It's about trying to work out whether something is worth eating or not.
它是指试着弄清楚一些东西是否能吃。
And for humans, food is something that we put in our mouths.
对人类来说，食物是我们放进嘴里的东西。
But if you are a very small animal, food can be something you land on.
但如果你是一只非常小的动物，食物可能是你脚踩的东西。
And which is why for many insects taste buds are some things that are found in their feet as well as in their mouths.
所以对许多昆虫来说，它们的脚上和嘴里都有味蕾。
A fly landing on the apple that you are trying to eat can taste it just by walking on it before you put it in your mouth.
如果你正要吃苹果，一直苍蝇落上去了，在你吃到苹果之前，它就能用脚尝到苹果的味道。
I, like most of you, have two eyes.
和大多数人一样，我有两只眼睛。
They sit in the front of my face and they point forwards, which means that my visual world is always in front of me and I walk into it.
它们位于我的面部前方，总是望向前方，这意味着我的视觉世界一直在我前面，是我前进的方向。
But most birds have eyes on the sides of their heads, which means their visual world is around them.
但大多数鸟类的眼睛都长在头的两侧，这意味着它们的视觉世界是在它们周围。
They often have close to wraparound vision, seeing to the sides and also a little bit to the back.
鸟类通常有近乎环绕式的视力，可以看到侧面，也可以看到一点后面。
And that kind of wraparound vision is really hard to wrap your head around.
而这种包罗万象的视力真的很难让你的头脑保持清醒。
And then of course there are changes that can occur over an animal's lifetime.
当然，动物的一生中也会发生一些变化。
So the umwelts of an adult might be different to the umwelts of a juvenile.
成年人的客观世界可能与青少年的不同。
Jumping spiders are very driven by vision.
跳蛛非常受视觉的驱使。
They have excellent eyes.
它们的眼睛很厉害。
But those eyes also become more sensitive as they get older, more sensitive to light, which means that I think the world of a jumping spider will get brighter as it ages.
但随着年龄的增长，跳蛛的眼睛也会变得更加敏感，对光线更加敏感，我觉得这意味着跳蛛的世界会随着年龄的增长而变得更加明亮。
One scientist describe this to me as a jumping spider watching the sun rise as it gets older.
一位科学家曾对我说过，跳蛛在变老的过程中，就像在看太阳升起一样。
So a sea otter has very sensitive paws.
海獭的爪子非常敏感。
They don't look very sensitive.
虽然它们看起来并不敏感。
They look like these weird sort of cauliflowery mittens.
它们看起来就像戴着奇怪的花菜手套。
They have a sensitive touch that is equal to our exquisitely sensitive fingertips.
海獭爪子上的灵敏触觉就像我们指尖上的触觉一样。
One of the key differences is that they are also extremely skilled at using that sense of touch.
其中一个关键的区别是，它们还非常擅长利用这种触觉。
They're very fast about making touch-based decisions.
它们在根据触觉做决定时非常迅速。
A sea otter will dive down into the ocean and very quickly root around with its paws.
海獭会潜入大海，并用爪子四处探索。
It will grab that sea urchin, yank that clam, and then rise to the surface before eating its food.
它会抓住海胆，扣下蛤蜊，然后浮出水面享用美食。
A sea otter doesn't have the benefit of blubber that a whale or a walrus might have.
海獭无法享受到鲸鱼或海象那样的脂肪所带来的好处。
It has very thick fur, but it can find enough food to eat because it has not only very sensitive hands, but very fast hands too.
它的皮毛很厚，但它也能找到足以果腹的食物，因为它的爪子不仅灵敏，还非常迅捷。
