An Immense World

This book is filled with information! Seriously! Each chapter is the equivalent of a Planet Earth 8-part documentary detailing a specific sense that animals have. The author provides numerous examples of how animals may have evolved these unique senses and how they use them to survive. There are 13 chapters discussing some of the most interesting animals senses known to exist, such as, infrared and ultraviolet light, surface vibrations, echolocation, magnetoreception, and electric fields. I’ll give some examples of interesting questions/topics that this book discusses in regards to different senses:

How the hell do some animals produce electricity? Did you know that humans can learn to echolocate? Or that Tiger moths can literally jam a bat’s sonar to prevent getting eaten? Or that US Navy’s only method for detecting buried mines using sonar is a dolphin? How are birds able to travel across the globe and know which direction to go when they migrate? Did you know that whales are 4x more likely to wash up on a beach during a solar storm?

This may seem like a pathetic gripe but there were too many footnotes in this book. A footnote on almost every page really became a distraction more than anything. I guess it goes to show how much information was packed into the book. Having a ton of material isn’t a bad thing, especially when it’s captivating, but it makes the book a slower read as you need to process everything written.

However, I loved the ending chapter of this book regarding saving the quiet and preserving the dark. Humans are the only species aware that other animal senses exist. We may never experience those senses but we have a glimpse into how they work. Our actions as a society can drastically affect these animals in ways we don’t even realize, like noise and light pollution. All in all, an incredibly insightful book.