#Love and other detours full

The process is incredibly messy: some stuff that’s discovered ends up not being right.

I want readers to understand that it’s not like science is this march of facts. That chapter talks a lot about the process of studying magnetoreception. I don't have that for a magnetic field, which makes it difficult to appreciate, difficult to study. Light and sound are somewhat abstract concepts, but at least I have a feel of what they’re like. They could be distributed throughout the body. And there are many reasons for that: The magnetic field pervades living flesh, so while most sense organs tend to be on the surface of the body-associated with some kind of orifice, something accessible to the outside world-the receptors that detect magnetic fields don't have to be like that. I don't know any of those things with magnetoreception. With vision, I always see with my eyes I know exactly which cells in my retinas are responsible for detecting light and processing the signals that go into my brain. Beyond that, there’s little known about how this sense works-almost uniquely among the senses we don’t know what the sense organ is, we don't know what the receptor is. Several animals have this ability-songbirds, sea turtles-which they use to navigate long distances, to guide the path of their migrations. Magnetoreception is the ability to sense the earth’s magnetic field. And you probe magnetoreception as a kind of “holy grail” for sensory biologists. I got oripulated by a manatee- oripulated is a wonderful word for when these aquatic mammals explore you with their incredibly touch-sensitive lip, like manipulation, but with a mouth instead of a hand.Īn Immense World traverses the familiar and unfamiliar facets of our own senses as well as non-human senses such as sonar and electrical fields.

#Love and other detours full

I wandered into an arachnarium, a giant hangar full of huge, gear-sized spiders. I got electrocuted by an electric catfish. I visited sea turtles in a lab in North Carolina. I traipsed around California in search of rattlesnakes. I had a very clear idea of who the protagonists of the book were from the start and by “protagonists,” I mean both the animals I wanted to feature for their incredible sensory abilities-everything from mosquitoes to rattlesnakes to mantis shrimps-and the scientists who work with those creatures. How did you organize your itinerary and research? It's a term that speaks to the singularity of our subjective experiences and the sheer diversity across the animal kingdom.Īn Immense World teems with reporting from around the globe. We can't detect the magnetic field of the earth that a songbird or a sea turtle uses to navigate on its migrations.Įach creature exists within its own sensory bubble, perceiving just a thin sliver of the fullness of reality-that bubble is the Umwelt. We can't detect the infrared radiation that a rattlesnake can, that allows it to track the heat of warm prey. Humans have very sharp vision, but we can't see the ultraviolet colors that a bumblebee can. Each creature has its own particular set of stimuli it can tap into that blend differs from species to species. He used it to refer to the part of the surroundings an animal could perceive through its own unique set of senses-the smells and sights and sounds and textures that animal has access to but that other species might not. It literally translates as “environment,” from the German word, but the zoologist who popularized it, Jakob von Uexküll, didn't use it to mean an animal’s physical surroundings. How would you translate this term for readers?

Your book opens with a German noun, Umwelt, which becomes a kind of meme in An Immense World. Yong recently discussed the astounding realms of animal sense and the urgent lessons of Covid and climate change with Oprah Daily. Biology geeks will dine out on the rich anecdotes, the historical detours and pithy footnotes, rendered in a witty, crystalline style. His sublime new book, An Immense World, delves into animal senses and what they reveal about Umwelt, “the part of those surroundings that an animal can sense and experience-its perceptual world.” From shrimp vision to sonar to mosquito tastebuds, Yong’s narrative brims with vivid scenes from laboratories and in the field, astute interviews with researchers across a spectrum of disciplines. His first book, I Contain Multitudes, investigated the surprising structures and rhythms of the microbiome-the amalgam of microbes and their environments and the biochemical give-and-take between them. Throughout the dark days of our pandemic, readers have turned to The Atlantic’s Ed Yong for his masterful reporting and trenchant analysis, which have netted a Pulitzer Prize and other accolades.