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Famous Ed Yong Quotes

“But take a moment to consider the miracle... Light is just electromagnetic radiation. Sound is just waves of pressure. Smells are just small molecules. It's not obvious that we should be able to detect any of those things, let alone convert them into electrical signals or derive from those signals the spectacle of a sunrise, or the sound of a voice, or the scent of baking bread. The senses trans- form the coursing chaos of the world into perceptions and experiences-things we can react to and act upon. They allow biology to tame physics. They turn stimuli into information. They pull relevance from randomness, and weave meaning from miscellany.”

Science
Book:An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
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“Even before vibrations are detected by its lyriform organs, the web determines which vibrations will arrive at the leg. The spider will eat whatever it's aware of, and it sets the bounds of its awareness--the extent of its Umwelt--by spinning different kinds of webs. The web, then, is not just an extension of a spider's senses but an extension of its cognition. In a very real way, the spider thinks with its web. Tuning the silk is like tuning its own mind.”

ScienceAnimals
Book:An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
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“...when [a black widow spider] is hungry, it can also draw its legs into a "crouch"--a sensory power pose that retunes its joints to higher frequencies...this stance might shift the spider's Umwelt toward the movements of smaller prey. It might also help it to ignore the low frequencies of wind. It's like a postural squint, which allows the spider to focus its attention. The analogy isn't exact, though, since squinting helps us to focus on particular parts of space. Here, the black widow's posture focuses on different parts of information space. It's as if a human could emphasize the red parts of our vision by squatting, or single out high-pitched sounds by going into downward dog.”

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