An Immense World

How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

By: Ed Yong

Narrated by: Ed Yong

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “thrilling” (The New York Times), “dazzling” (The Wall Street Journal) tour of the radically different ways that animals perceive the world that will fill you with wonder and forever alter your perspective, by Pulitzer Prize–winning science journalist Ed Yong

“One of this year’s finest works of narrative nonfiction.”—Oprah Daily

ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Time, People, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Slate, Reader’s Digest, Chicago Public Library, Outside, Publishers Weekly, BookPage

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Oprah Daily, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Economist, Smithsonian Magazine, Prospect (UK), Globe & Mail, Esquire, Mental Floss, Marginalian, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURY

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, 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.”

WINNER OF THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL • FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON AWARD

Nature, we know not yet

This book reveals an otherwise undetectable natural world. It reveals the triumphs of discovery from years of scientific labors. It showcases a whole new purpose for technology. For most readers there will be nature before this book and then after. Realizing how diverse the sensory world is beyond our understanding is arguably many times more revealing of our place in the world than the glances back at the small blue orb from the moon in the 1960’s. A naturalist or nature enthusiast who is unaware of the contents of this text is arguably ignorant of many ways that Nature works. In fact, any higher education institution that graduates students in the fields of ecology, biology, environmental science and related fields will soon be degraded if the information in this book is not included in their degree programs by the graduation year 2024. The writing is accessible for a broad audience. Please proceed with translation of this book in as many languages as possible.

There’s very few books I read more than once..

This is simply some of the best science writing by one of the best science writers alive. There’s not enough time to read all the books ever written; though some books are worth reading multiple times at the expense of the others and this one of them.

An amazing book about senses

An amazing book of Ed Yong “An Immense World”. It surveyed the biology and physics of senses which empower animals to navigate the world, by sensing light, sounds, chemicals, mechanical vibrations, temperature, and even electric and magnetic field. Humans exceed some of the senses of some of the species. But for the most part different species left humans behind their ability to sense beyond the range of human senses. Many animals have much wider range of sound frequencies. Wales can communicate through 10,000 miles using very low frequency of sound, which we cannot sense. Mouse can produce and sense ultrasound way above our limited range. Chemical sensing is much more acute and rich in most mammals compared to humans. Perhaps we are doing better than many, but not all, species in vision. But some species have extra sensors expanding their color vision by orders of magnitude as compared our three receptors. And humans completely or almost completely lack senses of vibration, electric or magnetic fields, which readily senses by insects, birds, or bats.

Humans lack important sensory abilities which makes our world, our technology and our art limited. Perhaps we should think about correcting this biological injustice and develop those missing abilities in the future.

Book is well researched and written masterfully. Audible format gives another treat: the author is a great narrator of his own text.

One place to improve - history of research on this subject should have started from early work on electric fish by Alexander von Humboldt, or even earlier - 1600s and 1700s studies of Dutch, Italian and French researchers. These studies of senses were critical steps towards modern science - biology, physics and chemistry.

A Call to Attention

Ed draws you into the world of other species interweaving highly important revelations about them and tying them to each other and humans seamlessly and effortlessly.

Informative and fascinating

I was overwhelmed by all the information, but I can always listen a few more times.