An Immense World Audiobook By Ed Yong cover art

An Immense World

How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

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An Immense World

By: Ed Yong
Narrated by: Ed Yong
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Humans have three or four colour-detecting cones in their retinas. Mantis shrimp have 16. In fact, their eyes seem to have more in common with satellite technology than with biological vision as we currently understand it. They have evolved to track movement with an acuity no other species can match by processing raw information; they may not 'see', in the human sense, at all.

Marine molluscs called chitons have eyes that are made of stone. Scorpions appear to see with their entire bodies. It isn't only vision that differs from species to species—some animals also have senses we lack entirely. Knifefish navigate by electrical charge.

An Immense World will take us on an insider's tour of the natural world by describing the biology, physics and chemistry animals use to perceive it. We may lack some of their senses, but our own super-sense lies in our ability to understand theirs. And in the face of the largest extinction event since the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, our only hope of saving other species is bound up with our ability to see what they see, and feel what they feel.

©2022 Ed Yong (P)2022 Penguin Audio
Animals Biological Sciences Biology Ecology Nature & Ecology Outdoors & Nature Science
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Maybe not the best for the audiobook listener who does other stuff simultaneously. It’s very information dense and you have to focus. Other than that, I’ve learned a ton and feel I’m a better person for having read it.

Gorgeous but difficult

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What a wonderful book. it is packed with fascinating anecdotes and facts that I keep sharing with my wife, son and friends and great insights that change the way we look at ourselves. Highly recommended.

fascinating first class book. Anecdotes & insights

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I really like the journalistic approach to explain each sense. It was magical. I will re-listen at some point. For now I will listen to the birds and look at moths with different eyes

Amazing new details of what we know we think we know

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After a chapter or so of listening as a 'background' I returned to the beginning and restarted, giving the book my full attention.
All of it is worth absorbing; all fascinating, quenching curiosity of the natural world.
Narration by author is usually what I go for - works best in non-fiction - and Yong's narration has not disappointed - if is extraordinary.
I have followed Yong in the Atlantic for a few years, and love his immaculate writing style and his depth pf research, but An Immense World is something else - it is A Masterpiece!

Outstanding, in true Ed Yong's style

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For the sake of our planet. I think I will listen to it again once more.

Everyone should read this

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Amazing eye-opening and incredible. 100s of years of research at your pleasure in a few hours. It's a little depressing in the end, but that's our own doing. From Africa, we get to experience a little more of the world "umveld" and I will now appreciate it that much more. Thank you Ed

epic

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