Will I love An Immense World?

An Immense World expanded my understanding of the sensory experiences of living creatures far, far beyond a mere five senses. While listening to Ed Yong's charming narration of his phenomenal exploration into the ways that vastly different beings perceive the world, I also read along in the trade paperback and studied the accompanying photographs. The bay scallop with dozens of bright blue eyes made an indelible impression! As a writer and a generally curious person, I try to stay open to different ways of feeling and appreciate intricacy; Yong's book delivers a master class in both.

I’ve been fascinated by all living organisms since my early childhood on Long Island. In our suburban yard, I would sit raptured, watching the hunting techniques of praying mantises, the burrowing ability of earthworms, or the seemingly drunk behavior of cedar waxwings after feasting on over-ripe berries. But I never fully appreciated the intricacies of animal behavior until I read this book. 

What Ed Yong masterfully achieves in this 400-page text is neither a Disney-like humanizing of other species nor an overly scientific explanation of how creatures respond to their environment. Rather, he brings us to a place where we… show more.

Any book that makes me think about the radical differences between the experiences of an elephant, robin, owl, spider, rattlesnake, and a bat is a surefire win for me. At times, I felt a shiver in my spine as I realized how other creatures see and feel the world so differently.

Yong spent time with researchers and came back with stories that I savored. Really, how any animals, including us, sense the world is a marvel. The book opened my eyes to how “alien” senses like ultrasound, electric fields, magnetism, and vibrations create other creatures’ versions of reality.

Poetic level writing about a whole new world I never thought of before - how animals perceive the world, explained in a way that changed how I see the world.

learned a lot about how our perceptions in the world taint our ability to understand it.

An Immense World is truly an eye-opening voyage of discovery. It illustrates, in detail, how different species experience the environment around them. Humans are sight-led. Dogs gain information through their noses. Spiders feel the world through their feet and webs. I found the whole premise of this book fascinating. Ed Yong gives detail after detail and example after example, all of which explore his theme. The book filled me with ideas as well as knowledge.

There’s a hidden world within our own that's stranger than the best-written fantasy. We humans can't perceive it, but various other animals can, and this book opens the door to it.

Birds see hundreds of millions of colors our eyes can’t. Ants use chemicals we can’t detect to call massive gatherings and spread alarms. Fire-chaser beetles sense heat from fires dozens of miles away.  

The impossible desire to perceive the world in these astonishing ways makes me want to stop every passing butterfly to ask what it’s like to taste things with your feet. Of course, I can’t, so I’ll… show more.

Ed Yong became a well-known figure because he covered COVID-19 for The Atlantic. But he started doing that when he was supposed to work on this book. I was thrilled when it came out because it was a longer wait than expected.

In extremely readable prose, he breaks down the perceptual realms of other creatures. Consider how a dog smells or what songbirds hear, not to mention senses that we don’t have that others do, like echolocation (well, some people do) or magnetic sensing. While reading, I started imagining the vast world inaccessible to me because of the limitations… show more.

Up-and-coming science writer Ed Yong explains how animals sense the world. We all know about the five senses (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching). An Immense World examines these plus other fascinating examples, such as sensing electric and magnetic fields.

I love how Yong considers all sorts of quirky, oddball animals. Evolution creates so much diversity, and Yong seems to know how to find just the right organism to illustrate his point.

Whether interested in animals that can hear ultrasonic frequencies or see ultraviolet light, this is the book for you. It is wonderfully written, accessible to all, and a… show more.

Yong is not a scientist himself, but he is an extraordinary writer who steps into the world view of one scientist after another to capture their passion for discovery and their amazement at what they learn and to share that with us, simply and clearly. He does all this with an ear for prose that delights with its ring as well as its content.

One of the messages running through this hard-to-put-down book is how differently and precisely various species adapt to their niche to sense what matters to them most. A key subtext is how much we lose by… show more.