Summary of Ed Yong's An Immense World

By IRB Media

Get the Summary of Ed Yong's An Immense World in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. Original book introduction: 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350063868

IRB Media

With IRB books, you can get the key takeaways and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience.

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Summary of Ed Yong’s An Immense World

Contents

Overview

A World of Senses

Smell and Taste

Vision

Colors

Nociception and Pain

Heat

Touch and Contact

Surface Waves

Hearing

Echolocation and Biological Sonars

Biological Batteries

Magnetoreception

How the Senses Unite

Sensory Pollution

About the Author

Overview

Humans are so used to relying on our own view of the world that it’s hard for us to imagine what it would look like from an animal’s perception. In An Immense World (2022), science journalist Ed Yong encourages readers to expand their perception and become aware of the complex and subtle phenomena that shape the animal world. He explores chemical signals, echolocation, biological sonars, and other fine-tuned means of communicating and hunting hidden in animal realms. The study of animal senses can help us both understand ourselves and create new technologies.

A World of Senses

The elephant, mouse, robin, owl, bat, rattlesnake, spider, mosquito, and bumblebee all have different ways of perceiving their surroundings. Every animal experiences the world in a unique way, based on its senses, but it only experiences a small fraction of reality.

In 1909, German biologist Jakob von Uexküll defined the term Umwelt as the part of an animal’s surroundings that it can experience and sense. The human Umwelt is just one of many possible Umwelten, and it is limited by what we can sense. Humans have senses that animals don’t have, and vice versa.

The senses allow us to take in the world around us and make it into something we can understand. However, the senses also come with a cost. They require a lot of energy to keep running, and if we tried to take in everything at once, we would be overwhelmed. Therefore, we have evolved to only take in what we need.

The senses of