Sentient
Jackie Higgins
Synopsis
'Spellbinding . . . More than any other book, [Sentient] has made me think differently about the world this year.' – Financial Times Best Books of the Year
The peacock mantis shrimp can throw a punch that can fracture aquarium walls.
The great grey owl can hear many decibels lower than the human ear.
The star-nosed mole’s miraculous nose allows it to catch worms in as little as 120 milliseconds.
In Sentient, Jackie Higgins assembles a menagerie of zoological creatures – from land, air, sea and all four corners of the globe – to understand what it means to be human. In it, we also meet the four-eyed spookfish and its dark vision, the vampire bat and its remarkable powers of touch, as well as the common octopus, the Goliath catfish and the duck-billed platypus. Each zoological marvel illustrates the surprising sensory powers that lie within us and enables us to engage with the world in ways we never knew possible.
'Lyrical and lucid . . . Higgins makes popular science accessible.' – Observer
The first rule of popular science is to reveal the wonder and mystery of the world. For that reason, Sentient, written by photographer and wildlife film-maker Jackie Higgins, is my personal pick of the yearSimon Ings, New Scientist Best Books of the Year
Spellbinding . . . More than any other book, [Sentient] has made me think differently about the world this year.
Alec Russell, Financial Times Best Books of the Year
Higgins makes popular science accessible – Sentient is a dizzying display of the evolutionary ingenuity not only of lifeforms, but also of zoologists, neuroscientists and biologists who have mapped new frontiers of knowledge. You may finish reading it and wish that humans could use that intelligence to stop the destruction of the habitats all of us live in.Saskia Baron, Observer