An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

by Ed Yong

What matters is that neither guise is something living things should obviously be able to detect. From a biological perspective, perhaps the most wondrous thing about light is that we can sense it at all.

It feels self-evident that we own our bodies, that we exist within the world, and that we can tell the former from the latter. But these are not axiomatic properties. Distinguishing self from other isn’t a given; it’s a difficult problem that nervous systems have to solve.

An animal’s sensory world is the result of solid tissues that detect real stimuli and produce cascades of electrical signals. It is not separate from the body, but of it.

Sensory pollution is the pollution of disconnection. It detaches us from the cosmos. It drowns out the stimuli that link animals to their surroundings and to each other. In making the planet brighter and louder, we have also fragmented it.