Key insights from
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
By Ed Yong
What you'll learn
Marcel Proust once said, "The only true voyage ... would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes ... to see the hundred universes that each of them sees." An Immense World by Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist Ed Yong is a travelog of "the true voyage" that Proust describes. The book contemplates the lives of our often neglected fellow companions on Earth: animals. Yong gathers anecdotes and knowledge from experts in the field to reveal how other animals encounter the world through their own senses. The journey is full of surprises that invite us to think differently about animals, step into their experiences, and allow their perceptions of the world to fill us with wonder. By treading the edge of human perception, Yong helps us discover newfound solidarity with other creatures—a solidarity not founded on superiority, but on a profound appreciation and advocacy for animal diversity.
Key insights
- 1 Planet Earth houses parallel universes and alternate realities.
- 2 Comparing one animal’s ability to smell with another’s is meaningless.
- 3 Our exceptionally sharp vision blinds us to other animals' experiences of things.
- 4 A birdsong contains mysteries the human ear cannot grasp.
- 5 The standardization of human senses is fragmenting nature.
- 6 Sensory pollution can be solved immediately once we challenge outdated concepts about the majesty of nature.
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