The Guardian22 Jun 2026Innovation
Automatically composed with AI from the cited sources
Eighteen volunteers spent six weeks adopting the sensory perspectives of otters, kestrels, salmon, earthworms, and red deer along the River Tone in Somerset in a study led by the University of the West of England and the Accelerator for Systemic Risk Assessment (ASRA), funded by the Ecological Citizen(s) Network. Trained in animal “umwelts” and instructed to describe experiences without interpretation, participants reported oral testimonies: an “as-otter” described train vibrations disorienting fish-hunts and dogs as visceral threats; a “as-kestrel” perceived a landscape of disjointed feeding strips; an “as-salmon” found a fish-run too exhausting to traverse; and an “as-earthworm” gained a new sense of soil interaction.