Challenge Corner discussion

A grand tour through the hidden realms of animal senses that will transform the way you perceive the world --from the Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York Times bestselling author of I Contain Multitudes.

The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of an immense world. This book welcomes us into a previously unfathomable dimension--the world as it is truly perceived by other animals.

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 humans that 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 which lie unsolved.

In An Immense World, author and acclaimed 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. Because in order to understand our world we don't need to travel to other places; we need to see through other eyes.

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I've started this one and from the Introduction I was hooked. I really enjoyed the way the author described the scene and set you up for what is to come in the book. So far I've read through chapter 5. The transition between chapters is flawless. It feels like a continuous story, not a textbook broken up into segments.

The description of all the different animals/insects really brings into perspective the reason behind the different ways these animals intact with us.

Chapters 6-7 (and prior)

I'm not sure how to discuss the book, so I'll list off some of my favorite facts about animals I've learned so far.

(view spoiler)[

I never really thought about the fact that hibernating animals need not be woken up by cold weather. When I get cold at night, I wake up and grab more blankets or shut the windows. If a hibernating animal were to wake up, it would ruin their hibernation. So their bodies have to prevent them from this type of reaction to cold.

Elephants can communicate through vibrations in the ground that warn others of impending danger.

Jumping spiders are the only spiders to use their eyes to catch prey. Other spiders use the vibrations in their web.

(hide spoiler)]

Chapters 8-9

I can say the least interesting chapter for me so far was the chapter on sound. This may be because it's hard for me to hear sound differences, so a whole chapter on minute differences meant nothing to me. Also, I live in a city so I don't get to enjoy the sounds of nature very often.

(view spoiler)[
I was very interested in the echolocation section of the book. Bats can deafen themselves with their own screech if they don't close off their middle ear. Then they have to open it again to listen to the sounds returning to them.

Also some humans can echolocate! Not as precisely as bats but still that's amazing and something I've never heard of.

(hide spoiler)]

Chapters 10-13

We finish up the book with a few more senses. We are walked through how these creatures use all of these different senses at one time to experience the world.

The book then goes into how we are effecting the senses of these animals.

(view spoiler)[ The light pollution from street lights lead to the death of thousands of insects, which is food for bats. Sound pollution prevents animals from hearing each other. Even cargo ships add tons of noise into the oceans and lakes. (hide spoiler)]

I did enjoy some pop culture references within the book. And in the audio book there was a moment when the narrator (author) added in his own blooper.

After reading this I will be buying my own copy to put next to my copy of On the Origin of Species, and I'm interested in more books written by Ed Young. I also really liked that he had a version of this book for young readers that included colored illustrations.