Overview
Von Uexkull shows that the world of a female tick is reduced to three sensory cues: the smell of butyric acid, the warmth of a mammal's skin, and the feel of a warm liquid. At sexual maturity the tick mates with a male, climbs to the tip of a branch, and waits. No stimulus other than the smell of butyric acid is detected. No light, no sound, no vibration, no taste, no other smell. Amazingly, the female tick may sit dormant for as long as 18 years sensing nothing and doing nothing until molecules of butyric acid reach her olfactory sense. When butyric acid is detected, the tick drops off the branch. If it senses warmth, the tick begins to burrow. If it senses a warm liquid, it drinks, falls to the ground, lays its eggs, and dies. Celebrating 30 years of Brown Symposia
The Brown Symposium at Southwestern UniversityThe Brown Symposium is presented by Southwestern University on an annual basis. Open to the public without charge, the symposium is funded through an endowment established by The Brown Foundation, Inc., of Houston, Texas, for professorships at the University. The symposia are designed to enhance the effectiveness of the work for which the endowed professorships were established. Each symposium presents topics in one of the broad areas of study represented by the chairholder. "Umwelt: Exploring the *Self-Worlds of Human and Non-Human Animals" was developed by Jesse Purdy, professor of psychology and holder of the John H. Duncan Chair. Lecture events are held in the Alma Thomas Theater, located in the Alma Thomas Fine Arts Center.
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The theme of BROWN SYMPOSIUM XXX is based on an influential paper by Jakob von Uexkull (1934) who argued that to truly understand animal behavior one must appreciate the animal's "umwelt" or self-world. This self-world is determined by the animal's sensory systems, the means by which sensory information is processed and perceived, and its action systems. To illustrate this approach, von Uexkull asks his readers to "blow, in fancy, a soap bubble around each creature to represent its own world, filled with the perceptions which it alone knows."