Reviews tagging 'Blood'
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong
1 review
erebus53's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.75
Ed Jong is clearly a man who is good at listening. None is quite so apt for describing the beauties of natural science as a person who is an experienced journalist and has a sincere curiosity about our world. By necessity the book is broken up in to useful topics, but the author fully explains how animals perceive their world, is not as cut and dried as this division might suggest.
Through the senses of bats, whales, dogs, electric knife-fish, octopi, birds, spiders and more, we look at the different ways that animals perceive things, and compare and contrast those methods with our own perceptive tools.
The narrative in this book is modern and eschews the previous anthropocentric view of our world as much as is practical. Animals who can see light that we cannot are not "receiving secret messages", they are simply interpreting things.. that our biology treats as unimportant information. As a modern collection of anecdotes, philosophical ideas, and scientific findings, it wasn't lost on me that many of the researchers were women. Jong's default human was not a man, and that when he refers to the average range of human perceptions he speaks explicitly of "sighted humans" and "hearing humans". In a book that champions the diversity of life, he is quick to clarify that many researchers of sensory science also have atypical senses, and that atypicalities are generally only considered Disabilities because of the way our society is structured to meet the needs of a typical majority (for more info, search: Social Model of Disability). I also love that when he attributes findings and scientific work he works to mention all the people who conducted an experiment, rather than just the top billing man on the paper.
I love that the audiobook is narrated by the author. This typically makes the text scan better because the narrator understands the text better, and can pronounce all the names. Ed Jong has an interesting accent which is predominantly British, but has some odd affectations. His habit of saying "toward" as if he were saying "to word" made me smile rather than wince. I was (perhaps overly) joyous to hear him pluralise non-English words in the way of the original language, especially in Latin and German (eg. Umwelt and Umwelten)
I found many of the descriptive passages in this book rapturous. I completely fell in with the vibe of the book and it resonated with my philosophy of life. It probably helped that I was fairly familiar with a lot of the animals and even pop-culture references that were made.
I've already recommended this book to a lot of my friends.
Through the senses of bats, whales, dogs, electric knife-fish, octopi, birds, spiders and more, we look at the different ways that animals perceive things, and compare and contrast those methods with our own perceptive tools.
The narrative in this book is modern and eschews the previous anthropocentric view of our world as much as is practical. Animals who can see light that we cannot are not "receiving secret messages", they are simply interpreting things.. that our biology treats as unimportant information. As a modern collection of anecdotes, philosophical ideas, and scientific findings, it wasn't lost on me that many of the researchers were women. Jong's default human was not a man, and that when he refers to the average range of human perceptions he speaks explicitly of "sighted humans" and "hearing humans". In a book that champions the diversity of life, he is quick to clarify that many researchers of sensory science also have atypical senses, and that atypicalities are generally only considered Disabilities because of the way our society is structured to meet the needs of a typical majority (for more info, search: Social Model of Disability). I also love that when he attributes findings and scientific work he works to mention all the people who conducted an experiment, rather than just the top billing man on the paper.
I love that the audiobook is narrated by the author. This typically makes the text scan better because the narrator understands the text better, and can pronounce all the names. Ed Jong has an interesting accent which is predominantly British, but has some odd affectations. His habit of saying "toward" as if he were saying "to word" made me smile rather than wince. I was (perhaps overly) joyous to hear him pluralise non-English words in the way of the original language, especially in Latin and German (eg. Umwelt and Umwelten)
I found many of the descriptive passages in this book rapturous. I completely fell in with the vibe of the book and it resonated with my philosophy of life. It probably helped that I was fairly familiar with a lot of the animals and even pop-culture references that were made.
I've already recommended this book to a lot of my friends.
Content Warnings
Minor: Animal cruelty and Blood
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