Caspar Henderson

Fish that swim backwards – and other natural wonders

Ed Yong explores the world of acute animal senses, including echolocation, enhanced colour vision and the ability to navigate by smell

The black ghost knifefish can swim backwards with ease, thanks to a wraparound sense of electrolocation. [Getty Images]
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  • 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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