马丁·史蒂文斯探索了动物王国中各种各样的感官，并讨论了揭示这些秘密世界的尖端科学。
我们的视觉、嗅觉、味觉、听觉和触觉对我们应对威胁、与周围世界交流和互动至关重要。所有动物都是如此——它们的感觉系统是生存的关键，没有它们，动物将完全无助。然而，其他动物的感觉系统工作原理与我们的非常不同。例如，从蜘蛛到鸟类，许多动物都能探测到紫外线，并对其做出反应，而我们对紫外线视而不见。其他动物，包括许多昆虫、啮齿动物和蝙蝠，可以听到远远超出我们自身听力范围的高频超声波。许多其他物种有我们完全缺乏的感觉系统，比如鸟类、海龟和其他动物的磁感应，或者许多鱼类的电感应。这些感觉能力的差异对动物在不同环境中的行为和生活方式有着重要影响，也影响着它们的进化和生态。
在这本书中，马丁·史蒂文斯探索了自然界中存在的非凡的感官系统，以及它们的用途。在讨论不同的动物感官如何工作时，他还考虑了它们是如何进化的，它们是如何被动物生活的环境塑造的，以及揭示动物如何使用感官的开创性科学。自始至终，他赞美生命的非凡多样性，并展示了感官系统的研究如何阐明动物行为、生理学和进化中一些最重要的问题。
Secret Worlds: The Extraordinary Senses of Animals (PDF)
Martin Stevens explores the extraordinary variety of senses in the animal kingdom, and discusses the cutting-edge science that is shedding light on these secret worlds.
Our senses of vision, smell, taste, hearing, and touch are essential for us to respond to threats, communicate and interact with the world around us. This is true for all animals – their sensory systems are key to survival, and without them animals would be completely helpless. However, the sensory systems of other animals work very differently from ours. For example, many animals from spiders to birds can detect and respond to ultraviolet light, to which we are blind. Other animals, including many insects, rodents, and bats can hear high-frequency ultrasonic sounds well beyond our own hearing range. Many other species have sensory systems that we lack completely, such as the magnetic sense of birds, turtles, and other animals, or the electric sense of many fish. These differences in sensory ability have a major bearing on the ways that animals behave and live in different environments, and also affect their evolution and ecology.
In this book, Martin Stevens explores the remarkable sensory systems that exist in nature, and what they are used for. Discussing how different animal senses work, he also considers how they evolve, how they are shaped by the environment in which an animal lives, and the pioneering science that has uncovered how animals use their senses. Throughout, he celebrates the remarkable diversity of life, and shows how the study of sensory systems has shed light on some of the most important issues in animal behaviour, physiology, and evolution.
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