BoMay reviewed An Immense World by Ed Yong
Do you see what I see?
5 stars
An engagingly written exploration of how animals experience their worlds.
464 pages
English language
Published Nov. 13, 2022 by Penguin Random House.
5 stars
(23 reviews)
The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world.
In An Immense World, author and Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth's magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and even humans who wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile's scaly face is as sensitive as a lover's fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even …
The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world.
In An Immense World, author and Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth's magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and even humans who wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile's scaly face is as sensitive as a lover's fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision. We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries that remain unsolved.
Funny, rigorous, and suffused with the joy of discovery, An Immense World takes us on what Marcel Proust called "the only true voyage . . . not to visit strange lands, but to possess other eyes."
jd 🔆 reviewed An Immense World by Ed Yong
Animals experience different realities than we do
5 stars
We tend to think the way we experience the world is the way it is. But animals, using or emphasizing different and other senses than our five, may experience ‘reality’ in entirely different ways. Young leads us on a deep dive into the sensory experiences of animals.
Wild Woila reviewed An Immense World by Ed Yong
Mind-blowing
5 stars
Every page a mind-blowing revelation of the many incredible, and unimaginable, ways animals sense the world. Filled with awe, delight & respect for the natural world.
Reading time 16 days, 22 pages/day
Eduardo Santiago reviewed An Immense World by Ed Yong
Title
5 stars
“Five senses,” they told me. How chauvinistic that seems now. Understandably so, but still.
Remember [book:Flatland|433567]? (I like to think everyone read that in grade school but am now wondering if it was only us math geeks?) Anyhow, Immense World brought back those feelings of wonder; of imagining what we know is out there but can never, ever fully understand. A dog navigating the world through smell. The countless ways of arranging color receptors, giving some animals a visual experience we can barely even describe. Touch. Vibration, through air (sound) and through ground. Sensing electrical fields. Magnetic fields! How little we know! And of course, [book:bats|197189543]. All creatures taking their senses for granted, just like we do, but we have that amazing ability to study and learn and devise instruments that help us see-hear-sense farther. And to imagine.
“[...] we can try to step into their worlds. We must choose …
“Five senses,” they told me. How chauvinistic that seems now. Understandably so, but still.
Remember [book:Flatland|433567]? (I like to think everyone read that in grade school but am now wondering if it was only us math geeks?) Anyhow, Immense World brought back those feelings of wonder; of imagining what we know is out there but can never, ever fully understand. A dog navigating the world through smell. The countless ways of arranging color receptors, giving some animals a visual experience we can barely even describe. Touch. Vibration, through air (sound) and through ground. Sensing electrical fields. Magnetic fields! How little we know! And of course, [book:bats|197189543]. All creatures taking their senses for granted, just like we do, but we have that amazing ability to study and learn and devise instruments that help us see-hear-sense farther. And to imagine.
“[...] we can try to step into their worlds. We must choose to do so, and to have that choice is a gift. It is not a blessing we have earned, but it is one we must cherish.” Yong, more than anyone else I’ve ever encountered or heard of, has made me recognize that gift. Has let me glimpse those worlds of sensation. He does so with tremendous compassion and humility.
Brett Hodnett reviewed An Immense World by Ed Yong
Fabulous
5 stars
Will change the way you see the world, and can't help but make you appreciate just how magnificent all the species who share the world with us are.
What a fabulous book. Everyone should read it.
Brett Hodnett reviewed An Immense World by Ed Yong
Fabulous Book
5 stars
Will change the way you see the world, and can't help but make you appreciate just how magnificent all the species who share the world with us are.
Tavish reviewed An Immense World by Ed Yong
My review of "An immense world"
5 stars
Loved listening to this as an audiobook. As a science book, it was really educational about what we know about the 'umwelt' of the creatures that we share the world with. More than that, it also talks about the effect humans have had on these that most of us don't realize.
sophist_monster reviewed An Immense World by Ed Yong
A Sensitizing Read
5 stars
A really stunning exploration of sensing. And a really nice incorporation of von Uexküll's "umwelt." Particularly compelling is the emphasis upon the entanglement of communication and sensory capacity.
markm reviewed An Immense World by Ed Yong
Review of 'An Immense World' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Ed Yong writes for the Atlantic, and his articles were among the clearest and most rational on Covid-19 during the pandemic lockdown. He has written a fascinating and outstanding discussion and review of the sensory world of animals including ourselves. Each chapter is about a different sense; smell, vision, touch, etc.
Which animal has the highest visual acuity?
Why are Zebras striped?
What colors can your pet dog see?
Why do raptors fly into wind turbines?
Can an octopus see its own skin color changes?
Why do hummingbirds make ultrasonic sounds?
Why can’t you tickle yourself?
And there are also some excellent words to learn, Umwelt, Zugunruhe (my favorite), exafference, and reafference. I highly recommend An Immense World and I’ve added his previous book I Contain Multitudes to my to read list.
Soh Kam Yung reviewed An Immense World by Ed Yong
A wonderful book about the sensory world experienced by various other creatures.
5 stars
An impressive book, full of wonderful facts and some grounded speculations looking at how various creatures sense, and make sense, of the world around them. Ed Yong (the author) reminds us that trying to understand the behaviour of creatures based on what we can sense can be futile. And by forcing creatures into a human centric world (near constant lighting at night, urban noise, artificial chemicals in the environment), we may be altering their behaviour and damaging the natural biodiversity.
Ed Yong starts by introducing the reader to the term, Umwelt (as used by biologist Jakob von Uexkül) to represent each creature's unique perception of the world. He then shows us the Umwelts of various creatures as experienced through the various senses: smell, taste, light, colour, the sensation of pain and heat, contact, vibrations and sound. He then covers three of the more mysterious senses; echolocation and the ability to …
An impressive book, full of wonderful facts and some grounded speculations looking at how various creatures sense, and make sense, of the world around them. Ed Yong (the author) reminds us that trying to understand the behaviour of creatures based on what we can sense can be futile. And by forcing creatures into a human centric world (near constant lighting at night, urban noise, artificial chemicals in the environment), we may be altering their behaviour and damaging the natural biodiversity.
Ed Yong starts by introducing the reader to the term, Umwelt (as used by biologist Jakob von Uexkül) to represent each creature's unique perception of the world. He then shows us the Umwelts of various creatures as experienced through the various senses: smell, taste, light, colour, the sensation of pain and heat, contact, vibrations and sound. He then covers three of the more mysterious senses; echolocation and the ability to sense electric and magnetic fields. Each sense is shown by giving examples of various creatures whose ability to use the sense differs and/or exceeds our abilities to use them.
He then closes the book by showing how animals draw upon the various senses to form each creature's Umwelt, and how we are altering what creatures are sensing from their surroundings by 'polluting' the environment with our lights, noise and artificial chemicals.
Throughout the book, Ed Yong features the research and work being done by numerous researchers to understand how creatures sense the world and, possibly, how they make sense of the world using the information provided by the senses.
It may be impossible to fully imagine how even familiar creatures like dogs sense the world compared to us, much less creatures like spiders, birds, fishes, electric eels, moles or elephants (all examples from the book). But Ed Yong gives it a good try, and by the end, you'll probably appreciate the fact that we may never share the Umwelt of other creatures, but you'll be aware that they see the world differently from us and that needs to be accounted for when trying to understand why they behave in certain ways that may seem puzzling to us, limited as we are by our own Umwelts.
