umwelt

/ ˈʊmvɛlt /

noun

1. the environmental factors, collectively, that are capable of affecting the behaviour of an animal or individual

Word History and Origins

Origin of umwelt¹

C20: from German Umwelt environment

Example Sentences

Umwelt is a German term describing the perspective of an organism based on its sensory abilities, environment and anything else that contributes to its overall consciousness — the way fish must perceive water much differently than birds or how a bumblebee can see ultraviolet light but we can’t.

From Salon

AI can find correlations between audio, video, chemical analysis, or any other kind of measurements that may create a sperm whale’s umwelt, which Whitehead agreed can be expected to lead to exciting new discoveries.

From Salon

Umwelt, an authoring environment designed for screen-reader users, incorporates an editor that allows someone to upload a dataset and create a customized representation, such as a scatterplot, that can include three modalities: visualization, textual description, and sonification.

From Science Daily

The researchers conducted a study with five expert screen-reader users who found Umwelt to be useful and easy to learn.

From Science Daily

In addition to offering an interface that empowered them to create data representations -- something they said was sorely lacking -- the users said Umwelt could facilitate communication between people who rely on different senses.

From Science Daily