A FORAY INTO THE UMWELT OF A PREDATORY BACTERIUM

The concept of Umwelt refers to the phenomenal world of an organism, defined by its sensesand what it does to stay alive, thrive and reproduce. Umwelt had a powerful influence on howthe scientific study of animal behavior under natural conditions developed in the middledecades of the 20th century and currently is enjoying renewed interest in the field ofcomparative cognition. Traditionally, animals have been the exclusive focus of Umwelt-basedanalysis. This chapter focuses on Myxococcus xanthus, a predatory bacterium with an unusual,complex social lifestyle. The presentation is intended to show that the Umwelt concept can beuseful in unpacking, in radically alien forms of life, processes regarded as cognitive in animalsand in a context (predator–prey interactions) long important to ethology and comparativepsychology, where Umwelt has done most work.