This book is everything I enjoy about nonfiction— packed with fascinating information but never dry, Yong brings gentle humor and fresh perspective, as well as the sweetly nerdy personalities of scientists. The sensory world of the animal kingdom, with each chapter devoted to a particular sense, our historic understandings and current research and knowledge are covered with just enough detail to gain a new outlook. Yong tries to have us understand the sensory experiences of various animals, an incredibly difficult thing to do. We as humans are so visually dominant, it is a true struggle to see the world through animal eyes (or ears, or smells, or sense the vibrations, electricity, or magnetism).

Filled with facts you can torment your friends and family with for days on end— songbirds sing in hypersonic tones we never hear! mice communicate in hypersonic tones we never hear, although humans have studied them in labs for decades! whale song can reach practically around the globe if unimpeded! bees not only see colors on flowers beyond our visual range, but sense their pollen electrically!— you will start to notice nature around yourself in new ways. Never boring, Yong brings you along as he meets each scientist, encountering their environment and species of study, their enthusiasm and deep knowledge. He asks the question you would if you were there, has the yuck or wonder reactions you would share.

Yong ends the book with a chapter length plea for humanity to consider the subtler impacts our choices have on the environment we share. The best illustration of this was the thousands of migratory songbirds confused by the annual blue light remembrance display in NYC for 9/11. I never knew that thousands of birds crash into buildings each year, disoriented, and the lights are turned off for 20 minutes each hour so the birds can reorient themselves. Yong is a mashup of equal parts David Attenborough and Rachel Carson. I highly recommend this fascinating book.