It can almost certainly tell different species apart based on the shape of air bladders.' It can likely sense shrapnel in war veterans and fetuses in pregnant women. 'If a dolphin echolocates on you, it will perceive your lungs and your skeleton. Communicating through surface vibrations is a mighty cool example that extends beyond treehoppers to elephants and spiders, and to this fact about frogs: Attuned to vibrations entering the eggs, frog embryos hatch quickly if a snake shows up with a hard bite, but ignore rain, wind, footsteps and even an earthquake.

In this book that follows on from 2018's I Contain Multitudes, Yong writes in a perfect balance of scientific rigor and personal awe as he invites readers to grasp something of how other animals experience the world. He is 'dumbfounded' by the 'haunting, mesmerizing' sounds.

In the company of scientists with a laser vibrometer, a device that converts the treehopper vibrations into sounds audible to human ears, Yong gets to hear them in the wild and in the laboratory. In An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, Pulitzer prize-winning science journalist Ed Yong explains that, on a real walk instead of this one we've imagined, humans would not be able to hear the treehoppers' music without special equipment. The noise emitted from even a single plant may be 'as raucous as a busy street.' Some sounds are song-like, others akin to the noises of machines or musical instruments. But it is not at all like the familiar vocalizations of crickets or cicadas instead, it's something richer, more varied. Produced by the muscular movements of sap-feeding insects called treehoppers, this imagined soundscape emerges from vibrations that flow across the surface of plants. Imagine that you take a walk around your yard or nearby park and, immediately, the sounds of an insect orchestra surround you.

I contain multitudes ed yong summary