Reading Group Discussion Questions

1. What word defined and popularized by the Baltic German zoologist Jakob von Uexküll describes the unique sensory bubble or perceptual world of each animal? Why did Uexküll compare an animal’s body to a house and what made his way of looking at animals this way a “unifying and leveling force” (p. 6)? While the sensory bubble Uexküll describes does constrain an animal’s life, what does Yong tell us that it alternatively defines? As we explore these “bubbles” and the distinct perceptual experiences of animals, what does the author say will be our biggest liabilities and our greatest assets? What kinds of questions does Yong say we should stop asking about animals’ senses? Which questions should we start asking instead?

2. According to philosopher Fiona Macpherson, what reasons do we have to doubt Aristotle’s assertion that there are five senses? How does Yong address this in his book? How do many scientists typically study animals’ senses, according to Yong, and how does his own approach differ?

3. How do restrictions in our own senses and human biases get in the way of our understanding of animals and their perception? In particular, what sense does Yong say many of us are biased in favor of, even if we are not able to utilize that sense, and how has it influenced our language and impacted our way of talking about our perception of the world around us?

4. How does olfaction differ between dogs and humans, and what is that crucial difference? What does Yong mean when he says that Finn the dog “is not merely assessing the present” when he sniffs but “also reading the past and divining the future” (p. 21)? What do groups like the Jahai people, the Semaq Beri, and the Maniq tell us about the myths surrounding the comparison of human and animal olfaction? What are “smellscapes,” and what are some animals that use olfaction for navigation?

5. Which is the simpler sense: taste or smell? What does physiologist John Caprio say is the clear difference between them? What amazing feature allows some animals to make expanded use of the sense of taste?

6. What does Yong mean when he says, “In a way, we see by smelling light” (p. 52)? According to the author, what is the most wondrous thing about light from a biological perspective? What universal feature do the eyes of all animals and humans share and what paradox does Yong say this commonality creates? When it comes to eyes, what was Darwin wrong about and how can his mistake help us to better understand and appreciate the diversity of visual perception?

7. What is the basis of almost all color vision and why does Yong say that color is “fundamentally subjective” (p. 86)? What is a monochromat? What counterintuitive thing about color vision does the existence of so many monochromats hint at? What misunderstanding does Yong overturn about comparisons between monochromats, dichromats, and trichromats? When it comes to UV light, what makes humans “the weirdos” (p. 93)? What does the author mean when he says, “Beauty is not only in the eye of the beholder. It arises because of that eye” (p. 225)?

8. What is nociception and what distinguishes it from pain? What role does this distinction play in the question of whether or not all animals feel pain? What is the trouble with the argument that a lack of a neocortex in fish can be equated with a lack of pain? Why do many scientists believe we should invoke the “precautionary principle” (p. 132)? Instead of focusing on the question of whether pain exists in animals, what question does physiologist Catherine Williams suggest that we ask?

9. What is the most thoroughly studied of the temperature sensors used by animals and humans and how does it work? What allows ground squirrels to hibernate in temperatures humans would find intolerable, and how should this inform our understanding of animals’ heat or cold tolerance? What are some examples of “extremophiles,” and what do we commonly misunderstand about their tolerance for extreme temperatures?

10. What “delicate sense” allows a sea otter to survive as “a small, warm mammal in a big, cold ocean” (p. 157)? What “transforms [this sense] from a coarse sense to an exquisite one” (p. 161)? Although this sense depends upon direct contact for humans and sea otters, how can it “operate at a distance” for many other animals (p. 159)? How do alligators, for instance, accomplish this in order to find food without having seen it? Why do you think, as Yong says, this sense inspires less art and fewer scientific devotees than other senses?

11. How do vibrations allow red-eyed tree frog embryos to escape their predators? Discuss the ways in which other animals utilize surface vibrations and “seismic senses” (p. 202). What are some of the advantages of using surface vibrations over airborne vibrations? What does Yong say is “[p]erhaps the largest distinction between surface vibrations and sounds” and what can it teach us about “the danger of giving in to our preconceptions” (p. 192)?

12. Which of the senses does Yong say sound is most closely related to and why? Despite their similarities, what distinguishes these two senses? What makes hearing a particularly natural primary sense for owls? How do the ears of insects vary from the ears of humans and other animals, and what three lessons about animal hearing does it teach us? How do the mating sounds of the túngara frog demonstrate how the senses “influence the form that beauty takes in the natural world” (p. 223)?

13. What is echolocation and how do bats use it to “see”? In addition to avoiding collisions, what else do bats use it for? How does it differ from the other senses discussed so far? What are some of the at least 10 challenges of echolocation that Yong explains and how does the bat resolve them? What other animals employ this sense? Why does Yong say that echolocation is “inherently exploratory” (p. 264) and what makes it one of the most accessible of all the senses according to the author?

14. What animals inspired the design of first synthetic battery and the discovery that muscles and nerves run on minute currents? How do weakly electric fish like elephant fish and knifefish use electric fields? How is active electrolocation similar to echolocation? Alternatively, what sets it apart from the other senses? Discuss what Yong means when he writes that “[a]nimal bodies . . . are living batteries” (p. 291). What three important things does the “cabal of electroreceptive critters” (p. 294) tell us? Finally, what does “the convoluted history of the electric sense” also reveal about the language of the brain?

15. Why does the use of magnetic fields remain the animal sense we know the least about? Unlike the other senses, which are used for communication, what is this sense primarily used for? How do Australian moths use magnetoreception to migrate, even though they fly at night? How do two properties of the magnetic field guide sea turtles in their own migration? What three ideas have been proposed to explain how magnetoreceptors might work?

16. To truly understand animals ’Umwelten and bring our voyage through the senses to a close, what does Yong say we must we consider? What are some of the internal senses and why are they seldom discussed? Why are these internal senses “non-negotiable” (p. 325)? What “difficult problem” (p. 328) must each nervous system solve, and why is this sorting process a “foundational condition of animal existence” (p. 328)?

17. Why does Yong believe that “our stories and myths are so full of characters who can transfer their consciousness into the bodies of animals” (p. 333)? What is misleading about these forms of representation? What does Yong mean when he says that “[t]he act of sensing creates an illusion that, ironically, makes it harder to appreciate how the senses work” (p. 333)?

18. What “ecological sin” does Yong say “should be especially easy to appreciate and yet is often ignored” (p. 336)? What does he mean when he says that this is a problem of disconnection? What lesson did we learn during the first year of COVID-19 about our ability to manage this problem? Why isn’t it acceptable to expect animals to simply adapt to extreme levels of pollution? How could rede- fining wilderness help us to solve the problem of our threatened sensescapes? At the book’s conclusion, what does Yong say is our greatest sensory skill? Why should we exercise it?

(Questions issued by publisher.)

Links of Interest for Your Book Club Discussion

Official Website
The New York Times, “‘An Immense World’ Is a Thrilling Tour of Nonhuman Perception”
EcoLit Books Book Review
Slate, “It’s an Immense World and We’re All Living in It”
NPR: Fresh Air with Terry Gross
Nature, “Ed Yong On the Wondrous World of Animal Senses”
Mother Jones, “Ed Yong Would Like America to Have a Bit More Empathy, Please”
VIDEO: #PouredOver, Ed Yong on An Imense World
VIDEO: Texas Science Festival 2023, “An Immense World: In Conversation with Ed Yong about All that Lies Beyond our Human Sensory Bubble”  
VIDEO: “I Contain Multitudes,” Ed Yong Talks at Google”

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