An Immense World - Ed Yong - ★★★★

AUTHOR: Ed Yong

GENRE: Animal Nonfiction

RATING: 4 stars.

In a Nutshell: A great option for animal nonfiction lovers. Goes a bit too technical with scientific parlance at times, but most of the content is comprehensible to lay readers.

Humans have always tried to understand animals. However, one key thing that we either forget or don’t realise is that we try to use *our* understanding of the world to perceive *their* understanding of the world. Scientists have realised the flaw of this method, and have already begun the change in methodology for animal behaviour analysis, using the concept of Umwelt to understand animal behaviour rather than anthropomorphising them.

Umwelt is the German word for ‘environment’, and it denotes an organism’s sensory world. Our sensory world is dictated by our senses—the five that are commonly termed senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch) and the various other senses that we aren’t even aware of possessing (heat, pain, vibrations, balance,…) However, we all know that the senses aren’t standard across species. For instance, a dog perceives a fewer number of colours than humans, while birds perceive colours much beyond what we can. Does this mean that dogs know that they can see less and birds are aware that they can see more? Not at all – their Umwelten has always been the same. So seeing ultraviolet shades is perfectly normal for birds while we go ‘Wow!’ at the thought.

The book takes all of the common and most of the uncommon senses, and elaborates on each of them through multiple anecdotes and examples. The anecdotes come from various sensory biologists and their research experiences, which ranged from awe-inspiring to frustrating. Each chapter is dedicated to a specific Umwelt, and is supported by elaborate footnotes. (and I mean ‘elaborate’ in every sense – about a quarter of the book contains just the footnotes.) There is a strong underlying thread of humour throughout the content, courtesy not just the anecdotes but the author’s funny remarks about some of the facts/animals.

What I loved most about the author’s approach is that he never places any sense or animal above or below another, and is certainly not biased towards humans or human senses. The book’s primary focus is not on establishing superiority but on understanding the diversity of the natural world. More importantly, the agenda is very clear: the intention is not to seek a better understanding of our world by understanding other species first. Rather, it is to understand other species, period.

A plus point to the beautiful colour photo inserts, but a minus for having them in one clump at the end of the book (before the footnotes) rather than inserting them at the relevant spots within the related chapter. (This feedback is based on the Kindle version.)

Further on the flip side, the content gets a tad overwhelming at times, especially when it comes to providing data-based support. Some stats became too tedious, and some explanations too jargonistic. The writing style is also a bit jumpy at times as the author seeks to include as many instances as he can to support his point.

A bigger red flag personally was learning about some of the experiments & research methodology in use. A few experiments raised in my head the same old doubt: how far should humans go during animal research? I admire what the scientists seek to do, but advocating such research also feels like supporting cruelty. These experiments left me quite torn about my feelings. I couldn’t buy their argument that we humans are doing all this for the animals. No, humans are doing all this mainly for themselves. We want to learn more and more about everything around us, even if the learning comes at some cost to other species. This is not exactly a flaw in the writing, but a negative emotional impact of the content.

On the whole though, this is a treasure trove of information for every nature lover and to those curious about how senses (across species) function. Reading it will open your eyes (to the extent of its limited four photoreceptor cones & rods) towards the vibrant diversity found in nature.

Definitely recommended if the subject matter interests you. Would suggest you read it a chapter at a time as it gets quite saturating otherwise.