Secret Worlds - Martin Stevens ****

An often-intriguing exploration of animal senses - both those familiar to us and (arguably most interestingly) those outside our human experience, such as the detection of electrical and magnetic fields. In each chapter, Martin Stevens gives us a wide range of examples of a particular sense in everything from spiders to bats, from naked mole rats to platypuses.

I have to confess I enjoy a good surprising science factoid - and there are a good number of these. I particularly liked the discovery that some bats' echolocation sounds are so loud that, if we were able to hear them they would be louder than a pneumatic drill (my comparison - he tells us the decibel level).

The book's only real failing is suffering from the biological science writing trap that was underlined by Rutherford's infamous dig 'all science is either physics or stamp collecting.' Although there are plenty of places where Stevens explores why something happens, there's also an awful lot of cataloguing here. So we discover that this species does this, while another species does that and so on. Occasionally I did suffer a little from being hit with too many examples and not enough narrative or explanatory science.

Having said that, there is much to engage the reader here. I particularly enjoyed the final two chapters on magnetic sensing and 'sensing in the Anthropocene.' The magnetic side was interesting because there are two competing theories as to how this is achieved, and there is often most to get your teeth into when there is scientific debate (the outcome between the two main theories here might be 'it's a bit of both'). The last chapter, on how humans have changed the environment in ways that affect animal senses (both in bad and good ways), is clearly covering a major interest for Stevens and is particularly fascinating.

All in all, an interesting and thoughtful contribution. It's a little confusing as Stevens had another book out less than four months before this one called Life in Colour - How Animals See the World which only covers the vision aspect of animal senses (I presume) - but the breadth of coverage of Secret Worlds gives it more of a substantial feel.

Hardback:

Bookshop.org

Kindle:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

Target Earth – Govert Schilling *****

I was biased in favour of this great little book even before I started to read it, simply because it’s so short. I’m sure that a lot of people who buy popular science books just want an overview and taster of a subject that’s brand new to them – and that’s likely to work best if the author keeps it short and to the point. Of course, you may want to dig deeper in areas that really interest you, but that’s what Google is for. That basic principle aside, I’m still in awe at how much substance Govert Schilling has managed to cram into this tiny book. It’s essentially about all the things (natural things, I mean, not UFOs or space junk) that can end up on Earth after coming down from outer space. That ranges from the microscopically small particles of cosmic dust that accumulate in our gutters, all the way up to the ten kilometre wide asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Between these extremes are two topics that we’ve reviewed entire books about recently: meteorites ( The Meteorite Hunt...

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

Govert Schilling - Five Way Interview

Govert Schilling is an acclaimed and prize-winning freelance astronomy writer and broadcaster in the Netherlands. His articles appear in Dutch newspapers and magazines, but he also has written for New Scientist, Science and BBC Sky at Night Magazine, and he is a contributing editor of Sky & Telescope. He wrote dozens of books (including a couple of children’s books) on a wide variety of astronomical topics, many of which have been translated into English, German, Italian, and Chinese, among other languages. In 2007, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) named asteroid 10986 Govert after him, and in 2014, he received the David N. Schramm Award for high-energy astrophysics science journalism from the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society.His latest book is Target Earth . Why science? We live in troubling times. Fake news and conspiracy theories abound, and trust in science is diminishing. Many adults don't seem to realize that almost everythi...

Search This Blog