The Hidden Language Between Flowers and Bees
Flowers tell bees when they’re full or empty of pollen and when they’re occupied with another bee.
The day I asked my dad if he sees the same shade of green that I do when looking at the grass, and he answered we can’t ever know, sparked my lifelong fascination with perspective — the unique way each person and lifeform experiences this world we share. There’s a word for it, umwelt, which refers to the perceptual experiences of each life form. In other words, no matter how much I tell you about me or you tell me about you, we can never really know what it’s like to be each other. You can’t know what it’s like to have my thoughts, memories, or feelings, and I can’t know yours any more than I can know for certain how my cats experience life, or my plants.
Still, there is much we can learn about each other and other life forms. It’s easy for you and me to learn about each other through observations and conversation, but learning about how plants or other animals experience life is a little more tricky. Especially since, while we may view our species as superior to all the rest, other animals have remarkable abilities that we don’t possess. For example, humans use our bodies and verbal language to communicate, but other life forms use different methods to exchange information. For…
