Alfie and Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe

by Carl Safina

A PAUSE HERE TO SHED some light on light. In the former world, light on Earth originated almost solely from the sun, with a meager assist from other stars. Moonlight is sunlight reflected. Wildfires and volcanoes generated some light, but trivially. Fireflies and phosphorescent mushrooms, yes, but they’re hardly a night-light. Phosphorescent sea plankton, jellies, and the glowing bacteria wielded by a few fish and squid offer no night guidance to land-bound beings. And none of that small constellation of glowing beings could have powered photosynthesis, by which the world uses light to create living matter. The light for Earth that created life on Earth was solely sun-sourced. That remains essentially true, despite city nights and fishing fleets visible from space. The business of “light” is strange. And “sight,” very strange indeed. “Light” is not a property of those particular wavelengths within the electromagnetic spectrum. What makes them “light” is something that happens only within nervous systems equipped with organs capable of reacting to certain wavelengths by creating coded nerve impulses, then interpreting the impulses. What we