Don't Say Yuk, Say WOW!
We have a love for weird, wonderful, and gloriously misunderstood creatures, no matter how big, small, slimy, or strange they may be. Some animals do things that make humans wrinkle their noses. We think that’s exactly when it gets interesting.
Every creature is simply doing its own version of normal. And when children learn to look closely instead of looking away, something shifts, curiosity replaces disgust, and empathy follows naturally.
There’s a concept in biology called umwelt.
It was coined by Baltic German biologist Jakob von Uexküll in the early 1900s, and it describes something surprisingly simple: every animal inhabits its own distinct sensory and experiential world. A tick doesn’t experience the same reality as a dog. A dog doesn’t experience the same reality as you. Each creature processes a completely different set of signals, filtered through completely different biology, producing a completely different version of what “the world” actually is.
The tick isn’t a primitive version of something better. It’s a fully realised version of itself, operating inside its own coherent universe.
I find this idea almost impossible to stop thinking about.
Most of us were never taught to look at animals this way. We were taught to look at them from the inside of our own umwelt, measuring their behaviour against human logic, human values, human expectations. When an animal does something inconvenient, we call it naughty. When it does something that mirrors our own emotions, we call it cute. When it does something we can’t immediately explain, we call it strange.
We almost never ask: what does this look like from inside the animal’s world?
That question is what this site is built around.
I’m not a zoologist. What I am is someone with a long background in wildlife conservation in Australia, a deep and slightly obsessive relationship with the science of animal behaviour, and a genuine belief that the most important thing we can do for animals is to actually try to understand them, on their terms, not ours.
That shift, from “yuk” to “wow,” from dismissal to curiosity, turns out to be surprisingly available to most people. It just needs a decent entry point.
That’s what the articles here are for. Some are funny. Some are uncomfortable. Some will make you look at a very ordinary creature and realise you had it completely wrong. That’s the goal.
If you’re a teacher, a parent, a curious adult, or a kid who just wants to know why an octopus is basically running a covert operation at all times, you’re in the right place.
I write regularly on Substack, sharing stories, observations, and curious deep dives. Some are funny, some are thoughtful, and many start with a simple “wait… what?”
Click through if you like learning things you didn’t know you were curious about. It’s free! (for now)