Books An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong (Author)

"An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us" by Ed Yong explores the vastly different sensory experiences through which animals perceive their environments, called their Umwelt. Yong reveals how creatures like elephants, bats, spiders, birds, and even insects rely on senses far beyond human perception, including smell, echolocation, electroreception, magnetic field detection, vibrations, and more. Each sense is adapted for survival and navigation in specific habitats, revealing a kaleidoscopic and often astonishing sensory world that humans rarely imagine.

The book is organized by individual senses, explaining discoveries about how animals use these senses to interact with their environments. Yong describes the impressive capacities of animals’ smell, sight, sound, pain perception, heat detection, touch, electric and magnetic sensing, and echolocation, among others. A striking theme is the complexity and uniqueness of these sensory modes, such as birds hearing complex songs at frequencies humans cannot detect or dogs experiencing the world through a vastly superior sense of smell. Yong also highlights ongoing scientific efforts to unravel these mysteries, often emphasizing how much remains unknown.