An Immense World by Ed Yong

This is a flat out amazing book that thinks creatively and deeply about how the non-human creatures all around us experience the world. The author is a British science writer based in the US, and he is clearly drawn to material that pushes our understanding to the limits. In this book he dives headlong into the world of the animal kingdom and has made often punishingly complex subjects digestible to lay readers without oversimplification. He goes through the way we perceive the world with our five senses, and then relates that to how other living things perceive those same things and why. To name a few things that he explores in depth with both wonder and candor are things that many people know something about, such as the sonar location used by bats and whales, that birds songs are far more complex than we have the ability to hear and perceive, and the fact that octopus have a separate neurological system, but brings new thoughts and insights to these. He then goes deeper into things that are less known, like why do scallops have such keen eyes if their brains can’t process the visual data? He doesn’t give us a conclusive answer, but the example raises a deeper point that lies at the heart of his book. We humans are so deeply embedded in our own particular way of seeing the world that we find it hard not to impose our perspective on other creatures – if indeed we bother thinking about them at all. This made me think about the world around me in an entirely different way that is exciting and invigorating.