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An umwelt (plural: umwelten; from the German , meaning "environment" or "surroundings") is the specific way in which organisms of a particular species perceive and experience the world, shaped by the capabilities of their sensory organs and perceptual systems.
In the biosemiotics of Jakob von Uexküll and Thomas Sebeok, it is considered to be the "biological foundations that lie at the very center of the study of both communication and signification in the human and animal". Often translated as "self-centered world," the term highlights how organisms, despite sharing the same physical environment, can inhabit distinct perceptual realities.
Uexküll proposed that each species has its own umwelt, a notion complemented by related concepts like Umgebung (the environment or Umwelt as observed externally) and Innenwelt (the internal mapping of the self to the external world). These ideas hold particular significance for fields such as cognitive philosophy, robotics, and cybernetics, offering insights into resolving complex problems like the infinite regress of the Cartesian Theater—the flawed notion of an endless chain of internal observers watching consciousness, which Umwelt reframes as a unified biological process.Hoffmeyer, Jesper (1996). Signs of Meaning in the Universe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 30–45. ISBN 0-253-33227-3.
As a term, umwelt also unites all the semiotic processes of an organism into a whole. Internally, an organism is the sum of its parts operating in functional circles and, to survive, all the parts must work cooperatively. This is termed the "collective umwelt" which models the organism as a centralised system from the cellular level upward. This requires the semiosis of any one part to be continuously connected to any other semiosis operating within the same organism. If anything disrupts this process, the organism will not operate efficiently.
Uexküll's writings show a specific interest in the various worlds that he believed to exist ('conceptually') from the point of view of the umwelt of different creatures such as , , amoebae, jellyfish, and sea worms.
The biosemiotic turn in Jakob von Uexküll's analysis occurs in his discussion of the animal's relationship with its environment. The umwelt is for him an environment-world which is, according to Agamben, "constituted by a more or less broad series of elements called 'carriers of significance' or 'marks' which are the only things that interest the animal". Agamben goes on to paraphrase Uexküll's example of the tick, saying:
"...this eyeless animal finds the way to her watchpoint at with the help of only its skin’s general sensitivity to light. The approach of her prey becomes apparent to this blind and deaf bandit only through her sense of smell. The odor of butyric acid, which emanates from the sebaceous follicles of all mammals, works on the tick as a signal that causes her to abandon her post (on top of the blade of grass/bush) and fall blindly downward toward her prey. If she is fortunate enough to fall on something warm (which she perceives by means of an organ sensible to a precise temperature) then she has attained her prey, the warm-blooded animal, and thereafter needs only the help of her sense of touch to find the least hairy spot possible and embed herself up to her head in the cutaneous tissue of her prey. She can now slowly suck up a stream of warm blood."
Thus, for the tick, the umwelt is reduced to only three (biosemiotic) carriers of significance: (1) the odor of butyric acid, which emanates from the sebaceous follicles of all mammals; (2) the temperature of 37°C (corresponding to the blood of all mammals); and (3) the hairy topography of mammals.
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