“An Immense World” is a simply excellent book. Yong covers all five human senses as expressed in other animals, plus three we don’t (generally) have — echolocation like bats and dolphins (some totally blind humans do use this), electrolocation like electric eels and other electric fish, and magnetic field sensing, like birds.

 

With all of these, going well beyond Thomas Nagel’s well-trodden but misfocused path in “What is it like to be a bat?”. Yong places animals in their Umwelt — THEIR sensory perception world.

 

What is it like, as best we can tell today, for a mantis shrimp to have 17 different types of cone cells, and a three-tiered eyeball to boot? Why do giant squid have such huge eyes? How good, or bad, are most human senses? (I’m priming here; while our sensitivity at low light is nowhere near cats, between humans having acuity topped only by raptors, and as primates being trichromats, unlike most mammals, our vision overall is pretty darned good.)

 

Add in that Yong is a darned good writer and this book is straight up 5 stars. No quarter- or half-star dings.