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Lead book review

Fish that swim backwards – and other natural wonders

With the technologies at our disposal, we can in fact now know what it’s like to be a bat, says Caspar Henderson

25 June 2022

9:00 AM

25 June 2022

9:00 AM

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

Bodley Head, pp.464, 20

Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution’s Creativity and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction David George Haskell

Faber, pp.448, 20

In the Zhuangzi, a collection of tales attributed to the eponymous 4th-century BC Chinese philosopher, a frog that lives in a well boasts about its comfortable way of life to a visiting sea turtle. When the turtle describes its own existence in the vast expanse of the ocean, however, the frog has no idea what to make of it.

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