An amazing world

Virtually every species experiences the world in a unique way, in most cases a very different from the way humans experience it. Ed Yong gives us countless examples of this in his eye-opening 2022 book An Immense World.

Each species has the sensory perception it needs to survive and reproduce. If it doesn't need to see, because it lives where there is no light, then it is blind. Orher animals need strong vision. Some may need a powerful sense of smell or a powerful sense of hearing. Others have senses human beings can only imagine, such dolphins, which can use sonar to detect buried objects, and bumblebees, which can sense the electric fields of flowers.

Yong offers up one jaw-dropping natural science fact after another. Mice sing, though our ears cannot hear it. Catfish are, in effect, "swimming tongues" because of their ability to taste with their entire bodies. Some insects can hear with virtually every part of their bodies.

Yong points out that earlier scientists have been dead wrong time and again about what animals can sense. Fish don't feel pain, for example. Well, yes they do. But if earlier scientists can be wrong, so can the scientists represented here. If any of them are wrong, however, chances are the real truth is even more amazing than the amazing information gathered here.