ED YONG: So, this book is about the incredible ways in which other animals sense the world around us. At the core of it is a concept called Umwelt, the idea that each creature has its own sensory bubble, its own particular sets of sights and sounds and textures and smells that it can perceive but that other animals might not be able to. So, my eyesight is very sharp, my fingers are very sensitive, but I can’t detect the magnetic field of the Earth in the way a turtle or a songbird can. I can’t detect ultraviolet light that bees or actually most other sighted animals can. I can’t see — I can’t detect the electric field surrounding other creatures in the way that a shark or a platypus can. Every creature has its own set of — has its own sensory world. It’s only perceiving a thin sliver of the fullness of reality. So, An Immense World is a journey through those other worlds. It’s a way of expanding our understanding of the world around us through the eyes and noses and ears of the other creatures that we share this planet with.
First, that I think that the Unwelt concept is incredibly humbling, right? Like, our senses give us this powerful illusion that we are experiencing all there is to perceive. Our subjective experience of the world feels total. But it isn’t. That’s an illusion. We are only getting a small part of what there is to perceive.
The second thing is I think it shows the even, like, mundane and boring aspects of the world to be full of wonder and magic. You know, when I walk my dog Typo around our neighborhood, by looking at what he’s smelling, I understand that there’s so much in even the most familiar of streets that he can perceive but I can’t. And to the nose of an albatross, the supposedly
— source democracynow.org | Jul 15, 2022