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A review by thunguyen
Sentient: What Animals Reveal About Our Senses by Jackie Higgins
5.0
This book is pure science, sometimes it's not easy to follow while listening and driving, sometimes it's down right way over my head with scientific terminologies. But I still find it super interesting.
It's a very encompassing book and well researched. Each chapter focuses on one sense, starting with an animal that possesses the most amplified ability with such sense in the natural world, then comparing with our human body, showing how deep down at cell level it's the same mechanism all along. So while our human senses are not superior than animals, our body is an amazing combination of millions and billions tiny tiny sensory robots that function without our conscious to give us our beautiful perception of the world around, the world as we sense it.
The writing is not at all dry. The author told a lot of stories of many scientists and doctors who spent decades dedicating to researching each topic, describing their experiments and theories. She told us of patients who lost certain sense and how they manage to live without such sense. And on the opposite scale, there are individuals who possess an abundance of said senses too.
It's a very encompassing book and well researched. Each chapter focuses on one sense, starting with an animal that possesses the most amplified ability with such sense in the natural world, then comparing with our human body, showing how deep down at cell level it's the same mechanism all along. So while our human senses are not superior than animals, our body is an amazing combination of millions and billions tiny tiny sensory robots that function without our conscious to give us our beautiful perception of the world around, the world as we sense it.
The writing is not at all dry. The author told a lot of stories of many scientists and doctors who spent decades dedicating to researching each topic, describing their experiments and theories. She told us of patients who lost certain sense and how they manage to live without such sense. And on the opposite scale, there are individuals who possess an abundance of said senses too.