An Immense World

‘Wonderful, mind-broadening… a journey to alternative realities as extraordinary as any you’ll find in science fiction’ The Times, Book of the Week

‘Magnificent’ Guardian

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

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.

We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries which lie unsolved.

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 don’t need to travel to other places; we need to see through other eyes.

‘A stunning achievement – steeped in science but suffused with magic’
Siddhartha Mukherjee, author The Emperor of All Maladies

‘Magnificent – an unbelievably immersive and mind-blowing account of how other animals experience our world‘
Peter Wohlleben, author of The Hidden Life of Trees and The Inner Life of Animals

‘A delightful sensory experience: to see the world through the touch-vision of a scallop, to taste through the feet of a mosquito and hear through the feet of an elephant’
Gaia Vince, author of Transcendence