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# An Immense World
- URL: https://www.trema.website/ed-yong-an-immense-world/
- Published: 2023-03-30T19:12:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-15T11:01:35.000Z
- Description: Ed Yong on the senses of the animal kingdom: catfish that taste with their skin, beetles that mate as forests burn. Our world, it turns out, is a flabbergasting place.
- Author: Daniël van der Winden
- Tags: Ed Yong, Non-fiction, Random House, 2022

Now and then, I like to read a big book. [Vast and memorable biographies](https://www.trema.website/benjamin-moser-sontag-her-life-2019/), [monumental essay collections](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/592315/a-little-devil-in-america-by-hanif-abdurraqib/?ref=trema.website), or [sprawling, epic works of fiction](https://ta-nehisicoates.com/books/the-water-dancer/?ref=trema.website)—books that cover long, impressive lives or astonishing topics, and leave you sitting in awe when you close them.

*An Immense World*, written by [Ed Yong](https://edyong.me/?ref=trema.website), uncovers the senses found in the animal kingdom (“nonhuman perception”) in splendid detail. It is grand and all-encompassing, yet microscopic. A Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist, Yong takes you by the hand and guides you from one mind-boggling observation to the next.

From a catfish and its body, which is covered in taste buds (*“if you lick one of them, you’ll both simultaneously taste each other”*) to flowers and the dramatic UV patterns they use to attract pollinators (*“bees can see the UV patches at the bases of their petals, which form vivid bullseyes”*); from forest fire-chasing *Melanophila* beetles (*“the beetles have perhaps the most dramatic sex in the animal kingdom, mating as a forest burns around them”*) to a library of treehopper recordings (*“the songs are haunting, mesmerising, and surprising”*): he makes you feel like our planet is (terrifyingly) larger than it already seemed, and (reassuringly) smaller than ever before.

I think this book, filled to the brim with itsy-bitsy bewilderments, has the power to shift the way many a reader observes the world and sees their place in it.

If you give it the attention it deserves while you read it, and allow it to draw you in—*really* draw you in—our planet could, possibly, never look, sound and feel the same to you again. A monumental book, bound to leave its readers flabbergasted by nature.

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> ***An Immense World*** by Ed Yong  
> Published by Random House in 2022

[Buy the book](https://bookshop.org/p/books/an-immense-world-how-animal-senses-reveal-the-hidden-realms-around-us-ed-yong/17476424?aid=93138&ean=9780593133231&listref=trema&ref=trema.website)