An Immense World

Enter a new dimension - the world as it is truly perceived by other animals.

'Wonderful, mind-broadening... a journey to alternative realities as extraordinary as any you'll find in science fiction' The Times

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 only a tiny sliver of an immense world. This book welcomes us into previously unfathomable dimensions - 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 plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision.

Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the threads of scent, waves of electromagnetism and pulses of pressure that surround us. Because in order to understand our world we need to see through other eyes.

'A stunning achievement - steeped in science but suffused with magic' Siddhartha Mukherjee, author The Song of the Cell

'An Immense World... manages to be both a celebration of our species' genius for observation while also revealing how narrow and partial is our "sense" of things.' Mark Cocker, New Statesman Books of the Year 2022