My next thought was about the absence of the birds which usually accompanied me for my breakfast, picking sunflowers from the bird-feeder hanging outside the same kitchen window. It took me a few seconds to realize that these two things were related: The cat was there exactly because of the birds, and the birds had hopefully realized that the cat was dangerously close and had to look for breakfast some other place.In his theory of ecological perception, Gibson (1979) wrote how all organisms perceive affordances of their physical environments and act accordantly. Different substances and physical contexts afford us with different possibilities: the orange cat had definitely realized the affordances of the specific physical context that was frequently visited by tasty birds. It had realized that specific thin branches could hold its weight if it spread the weight across them. It was exactly the branches which I had cut a year earlier that made it possible to stay hidden and still have enough space to jump in the direction of the bird feeder.
How smart this cat is (!), I thought – I can imagine how even smarter it could be if it was hungry. Judging from its size it seemed like it performed bird catching only for fun… and I felt guilty: It was me who placed the bird feeder outside the window in order to watch the birds; It was me who changed the affordance of the bush and by doing so made it possible for the cat to catch birds form there. It was my responsibility if any of the birds got killed…
I started to think about all of the unexpected and yet unknown consequences of human interference with nature. Our rapid change of affordances of the Earth influences the life of organisms that we share our planet with. We have power and technology to interfere with nature in diverse ways. We have to be responsible...
Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception.Boston, Houghton Mifflin.
