
The Light Eaters
How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth
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Narrated by:
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Zoë Schlanger
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By:
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Zoë Schlanger
About this listen
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
An Audible Best Nonfiction Listen of 2024
TIME’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2024 • A Best Book of the Year: Barnes & Noble and Publishers Weekly • An Amazon Best Nonfiction Book of the Year
“A masterpiece of science writing.” –Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass
“Mesmerizing, world-expanding, and achingly beautiful.” –Ed Yong, author of An Immense World
“Rich, vital, and full of surprises. Read it!” –Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White Sky and The Sixth Extinction
“A brilliant must-read. This book shook and changed me.” –David George Haskell, author of Sounds Wild and Broken, The Songs of Trees, and The Forest Unseen
Award-winning Atlantic staff writer Zoë Schlanger delivers a groundbreaking work of popular science that probes the hidden world of the plant kingdom, “destabilizing not just how we see the green things of the world but also our place in the hierarchy of beings, and maybe the notion of that hierarchy itself.” (The New Yorker)
It takes tremendous biological creativity to be a plant. To survive and thrive while rooted in a single spot, plants have adapted ingenious methods of survival. In recent years, scientists have learned about their ability to communicate, recognize their kin and behave socially, hear sounds, morph their bodies to blend into their surroundings, store useful memories that inform their life cycle, and trick animals into behaving to their benefit, to name just a few remarkable talents.
The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system. What is intelligent life if not a vine that grows leaves to blend into the shrub on which it climbs, a flower that shapes its bloom to fit exactly the beak of its pollinator, a pea seedling that can hear water flowing and make its way toward it? Zoë Schlanger takes us across the globe, digging into her own memories and into the soil with the scientists who have spent their waking days studying these amazing entities up close.
What can we learn about life on Earth from the living things that thrive, adapt, consume, and accommodate simultaneously? More important, what do we owe these life forms once we come to understand their rich and varied abilities? Examining the latest epiphanies in botanical research, Schlanger spotlights the intellectual struggles among the researchers conceiving a wholly new view of their subject, offering a glimpse of a field in turmoil as plant scientists debate the tenets of ongoing discoveries and how they influence our understanding of what a plant is.
We need plants to survive. But what do they need us for—if at all? An eye-opening and informative look at the ecosystem we live in, this book challenges us to rethink the role of plants—and our own place—in the natural world.
©2024 Zoë Schlanger (P)2024 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
One of humanity’s oldest beliefs is that our world is alive. Though once ridiculed by some scientists, the idea of Earth as a vast interconnected living system has gained acceptance in recent decades. We, and all living things, are more than inhabitants of Earth—we are Earth, an outgrowth of its structure and an engine of its evolution. Life and its environment have coevolved for billions of years, transforming a lump of orbiting rock into a cosmic oasis—a planet that breathes, metabolizes, and regulates its climate.
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Fascinating and well researched
- By Amazon Customer on 07-10-24
By: Ferris Jabr
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Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask
- Anishinaabe Botanical Teachings
- By: Mary Siisip Geniusz, Wendy Makoons Geniusz - editor
- Narrated by: Wendy Makoons Geniusz
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Mary Siisip Geniusz has spent more than thirty years working with, living with, and using the Anishinaabe teachings, recipes, and botanical information, she shares in Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask. Geniusz gained much of the knowledge she writes about from her years as an oshkaabewis, a traditionally trained apprentice, and as friend to the late Keewaydinoquay, an Anishinaabe medicine woman from the Leelanau Peninsula in Michigan and a scholar, teacher, and practitioner in the field of native ethnobotany.
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Use of plants
- By Anita on 11-10-24
By: Mary Siisip Geniusz, and others
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An Immense World
- How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
- By: Ed Yong
- Narrated by: Ed Yong
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world. 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.
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If you’ve never read about the wonder of animal sensory capabilities this is for you
- By MediaBaron on 06-27-22
By: Ed Yong
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I Contain Multitudes
- The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
- By: Ed Yong
- Narrated by: Charlie Anson
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Joining the ranks of popular science classics like The Botany of Desire and The Selfish Gene, a groundbreaking, wondrously informative, and vastly entertaining examination of the most significant revolution in biology since Darwin - a "microbe's-eye view" of the world that reveals a marvelous, radically reconceived picture of life on Earth.
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Undoes what you've learned from the headlines
- By Tristan on 10-14-16
By: Ed Yong
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Rooted
- Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit
- By: Lyanda Lynn Haupt
- Narrated by: Christine Williams
- Length: 5 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In Rooted, cutting-edge science supports a truth that poets, artists, mystics, and earth-based cultures across the world have proclaimed over millennia: Life on this planet is radically interconnected. Our bodies, thoughts, minds, and spirits are affected by the whole of nature, and they affect this whole in return. In this time of crisis, how can we best live upon our imperiled, beloved earth? Award-winning writer Lyanda Lynn Haupt’s highly personal new book is a brilliant invitation to live with the earth in both simple and profound ways.
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Managed to get halfway through.
- By IcarusGen2 on 06-09-22
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The Nature of Oaks
- The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees
- By: Douglas W. Tallamy
- Narrated by: Adam Barr
- Length: 4 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Oaks sustain a complex and fascinating web of wildlife. The Nature of Oaks reveals what is going on in oak trees month by month, highlighting the seasonal cycles of life, death, and renewal. From woodpeckers who collect and store hundreds of acorns for sustenance to the beauty of jewel caterpillars, Tallamy illuminates and celebrates the wonders that occur right in our own backyards. The Nature of Oaks will inspire you to treasure these trees and to act to nurture and protect them.
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Inspirational
- By Kaysi12 on 07-22-22
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Forest Walking
- Discovering the Trees and Woodlands of North America
- By: Peter Wohlleben, Jane Billinghurst
- Narrated by: Sean Sonier
- Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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When you walk in the woods, do you use all five senses to explore your surroundings? For most of us, the answer is no—but when we do, a walk in the woods can go from pleasant to immersive and restorative. Forest Walking teaches you how to engage with the forest by decoding nature’s signs and awakening to the ancient past and thrilling present of the ecosystem around you.
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More than meets the eye
- By movinon on 01-30-23
By: Peter Wohlleben, and others
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The Revolutionary Genius of Plants
- A New Understanding of Plant Intelligence and Behavior
- By: Stefano Mancuso
- Narrated by: Gibson Frazier
- Length: 4 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Do plants have intelligence? Do they have memory? Are they better problem solvers than people? The Revolutionary Genius of Plants - a fascinating, paradigm-shifting work that upends everything you thought you knew about plants - makes a compelling scientific case that these and other astonishing ideas are all true.
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Inaccurate book description
- By windelbo on 02-18-19
By: Stefano Mancuso
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The Seven Generations and the Seven Grandfather Teachings
- By: James Vukelich Kaagegaabaw
- Narrated by: James Vukelich Kaagegaabaw
- Length: 1 hr and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Discover indigenous wisdom for a life well lived in "The Seven Generations and the Seven Grandfather Teachings." Based on ancient teachings from the Anishinaabe / Ojibwe people, this spiritual translation of the sacred laws guides us toward Mino-bimaadiziwin, "the good life" – a life of harmony, free from contradiction or conflict.
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I enjoyed the Ojibway stories
- By stephen j wood on 04-14-25
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Night Magic
- Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark
- By: Leigh Ann Henion
- Narrated by: Leigh Ann Henion
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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In this glorious celebration of the night, New York Times bestselling nature writer Leigh Ann Henion invites us to leave our well-lit homes, step outside, and embrace the dark as a profoundly beautiful part of the world we inhabit. Because no matter where we live, we are surrounded by animals that rise with the moon, and blooms that reveal themselves as light fades. Henion explores her home region of Appalachia, where she attends a synchronous firefly event in Tennessee, a bat outing in Alabama, and a moth festival in Ohio.
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Must read! Cozy, informative, and will change you!
- By KaylaA on 04-15-25
By: Leigh Ann Henion
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Braiding Sweetgrass
- Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
- By: Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Narrated by: Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers.
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Finally, Words
- By Donovan P Malley on 06-30-19
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Planta Sapiens
- The New Science of Plant Intelligence
- By: Paco Calvo, Natalie Lawrence - contributor
- Narrated by: Christopher P. Brown
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Decades of research document plants' impressive abilities: they communicate with one another, manipulate other species, and move in sophisticated ways. Lesser known, however, is the new evidence that plants may actually be sentient. Although plants may not have brains, their microscopic commerce exposes a system not unlike the neuronal networks running through our own bodies. Paco Calvo offers an entirely new perspective on plant biology. In Planta Sapiens, he shows for the first time how we can use tools developed in animal cognition studies in a quest to deeply understand plant intelligence.
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Eye Opener
- By Niki on 01-08-24
By: Paco Calvo, and others
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Restoring the Kinship Worldview
- Indigenous Voices Introduce 28 Precepts for Rebalancing Life on Planet Earth
- By: Wahinkpe Topa (Four Arrows), Darcia Narváez PhD
- Narrated by: Wahinkpe Topa (Four Arrows), Darcia Narváez PhD, Sage Ryan
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Indigenous worldviews, and the knowledge they confer, are critical for human survival and the wellbeing of future generations. Editors Wahinkpe Topa (Four Arrows) and Darcia Narvaez present 28 powerful excerpted passages from Indigenous leaders, including Mourning Dove, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Winona LaDuke, and Xiuhtezcatl Martinez.
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Interactions between the authors and readers
- By William C McGarvey on 02-22-25
By: Wahinkpe Topa (Four Arrows), and others
What listeners say about The Light Eaters
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- Maggie
- 06-02-24
The caring authenticity of the author
Thank you for exploring the lives of the plant world. Your research is fascinating and inspiring.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Blue Horizon
- 06-23-24
Staggering, beautiful, engrossing
An absolutely fantastic exploration of the world. A must-read for all humans. Beautifully written, wisely considered, and humanely told.
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4 people found this helpful
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- CVBullen
- 08-14-24
Incredible insight into the plant world
Every page was a new insight. I love this book and hope everyone reads it. it will redefine your view of plants and the position of humans in the natural world.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 07-26-24
I learned to appreciate plants more
This read like a science textbook, and I was happy to find it was on audible. Interesting but laborious to read.
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- April Mays
- 10-18-24
Education blended with pleasure
What a beautiful well thought out book. This book put in to words what I have felt all my life.
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- Meghan Martinez
- 03-22-25
Fascinating
This book offers a fascinating look at plant intelligence. It is immensely readable and thought provoking
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- A.H. Derman
- 07-16-24
Glorious
Lovely, glorious science writing on an intriguing topic, written passionately, poetically yet extremely erudite in its dealings with scientific concepts and explanations. A masterpiece!
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3 people found this helpful
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- Susan
- 07-25-24
Science is awesome
Mind blowing, expansive, so very necessary. There is so much in here. I can hardly wait to listen to it again.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-04-24
I Watch Alot Of Docos And DID KNOW All This!
Really detailed! you will never look at plants the same again!I i want more! any gardener will love this!
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- Groot
- 07-02-24
Best Book I've Read In Years
Thank you so much for writing this amazing book! I learned so much! Excellent narration too!
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