Book · 2022
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
by Ed Yong
Ed Yong maps the hidden sensory worlds of animals — from the electric fields sharks feel to the ultraviolet colors butterflies see — that exist just outside human perception.
What does Reddit think of An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us?
An Immense World has 2 mentions across Reddit's tracked subs, both from r/askscience in 2022, both arriving with neutral sentiment. That's a thin data set, but the two comments that do exist are useful: one (↑15) invokes the book to rebut the notion that human senses are universally weak, pointing to Ed Yong's argument that our vision holds up favorably against most animals; the other (↑14) recommends it outright as "fantastically interesting." Neither is a throwaway. r/askscience commenters tend toward precision, and when they cite a popular-science book, they usually mean it. Two mentions don't generate a consensus, so there's no contested take to report, no split between subreddits, no dissenting thread to quote. What exists is a narrow but genuine signal: scientists and science-literate readers reached for this book when the question was what animals actually perceive, and they cited it as an authority rather than a starting point.
Community feedback & reader fit
Themes
- · animal sensory biology
- · umwelt — the species-specific perceptual world
- · echolocation and non-visual navigation
- · electroreception and magnetoreception
- · human senses in comparative perspective
Common praise
- + r/askscience commenters cite it when correcting misconceptions about human senses, which means it's doing real argumentative work in technical threads.
- + The ↑15 comment treats Yong's comparative framework as settled enough to quote without hedging.
- + A second commenter calls it "fantastically interesting" and links the Goodreads page — that's a rec, not a hedge.
Common criticism
- − Two total mentions in seven years of tracking means Reddit hasn't stress-tested the book's claims in the way denser discussions would.
- − No r/biology or r/evolution threads surfaced in the data, so its reception among specialist subreddits is unknown.
Who it's for
If you've ever read a pop-science piece about animal senses and wanted three hundred pages of follow-through, this is the book. It works for readers who already know the word "umwelt" and for those encountering it for the first time. The r/askscience commenters reaching for it were trying to win factual arguments, which suggests the book delivers citable specifics rather than vague wonder. Casual naturalists will find it readable; anyone who thinks human perception is the default setting for sensory experience will find it corrective.
Mentions over time
Top subreddits
Which Reddit comments matter for An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us?
Top-upvoted quotes across the subreddits where this book is mentioned. Click through to read the full thread.
“Humans’ senses are not terrible, depending. Ed Yong in the excellent An Immense World identifies our sense of sight as quite broad by comparison with a few noted animals, and as you say, with focus even smell/scent and hearing are okay — blind humans can learn to echolocate, which may be limited but…
“A fantastically interesting book about the different senses that animals have is _An Immense World_ by Ed Yong:
Convinced? Pick up An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
What else does r/askscience read?
Other books mentioned in the same sub, ranked. Shared-sub overlap with this title breaks ties.
The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins argues that evolution makes more sense when you stop rooting for the organism and start watching the gene.
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Siddhartha Mukherjee traces cancer from ancient papyrus to targeted therapy, framing it as a 4,000-year war medicine is still losing on some fronts.
What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
Randall Munroe
Randall Munroe takes absurd physics questions — what if a baseball traveled at 90% the speed of light? — and answers them with actual math.
Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
Neil Shubin
A paleontologist finds a fish fossil in the Arctic and uses it to trace the evolutionary origin of your hands, ears, and hernias.
A Brief History of Time
Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking explains black holes, the Big Bang, and the edge of time to people who never took a physics class.
Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive
Philipp Dettmer
Philipp Dettmer of Kurzgesagt turns the immune system into a 300-page illustrated war story, written for the person who watched every YouTube video and still wanted more.
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us — frequently asked
What does Reddit actually say about An Immense World?+
Not much yet — 2 mentions, both from r/askscience in 2022. But both comments are substantive: one uses the book to defend human sensory capabilities in a comparative context (↑15), the other recommends it plainly as "fantastically interesting" (↑14). For a book this specialized, two precise citations from a science-literate sub is a decent early signal.
Is An Immense World scientifically accurate enough for r/askscience standards?+
Based on available data, yes. The two r/askscience commenters who cite it do so to support factual claims, not as a vague popularity vote. One leans on Yong's comparative sight data to rebut a specific question about human senses. That's the kind of use that implies the book holds up to scrutiny, though the sample size is small.
Should I read An Immense World if I've already read other animal-cognition books?+
The Reddit data doesn't offer a direct comparison to titles like Are We Smart Enough for What Animals Think? — no commenter has stacked them side by side. What the r/askscience thread suggests is that Yong's focus is specifically sensory biology rather than cognition broadly, so overlap is probably limited. Worth reading on its own terms.
Is An Immense World worth reading in 2026?+
The Reddit signal is thin but positive. Two mentions from r/askscience, both neutral in measured sentiment, both practical in intent — commenters reached for this book when they needed a specific, reliable answer about animal senses. Books that get cited to win arguments in science subreddits tend to earn that role. The data doesn't contradict the recommendation.