An Immense World Dewey Decimal Number: 591.5

The book’s question is how an animal experiences its surroundings

The subtitle identifies the book's focus: animal senses and aspects of the world that human observers can miss. The catalogue subject headings name senses and sensation, animal behaviour, physiology and neurosciences. These headings fit a book asking about perception rather than offering a general list of animal species. They also explain why a reader searching only for wildlife may need to narrow the request. The key relationship is between an organism's sensory capacities and the information available in its environment.

Sources: [1]

The publisher's description gives examples involving smell, light, vibration and electric or magnetic information. Rather than reproducing its catalogue of animals, use those categories to frame a question: what signal is present, what can the animal detect, and what does that detection make possible? This is the distinctive promise of Yong's book. It shifts attention from how an animal looks to us toward what parts of its surroundings may matter to the animal itself.

Sources: [2]

Why this answer is explicitly for the EPUB

The selected electronic record lists ISBN 9780593133248 as an ebook and describes one online resource. Its Dewey field contains 591.5. The publisher's library page independently labels this ISBN as Ebook (EPUB), issued by Random House in June 2022. The print ISBN appears in the electronic record's separate cancelled or invalid ISBN field and in its link to a print version. Those relationships help locate another format, but they do not turn the electronic record into direct evidence of the print record's classification.

Sources: [1] [2]

The original electronic record also notes that its description was based on the print-version record and publisher-supplied cataloguing data, with the resource not viewed. That is useful evidence about the description's provenance, not a reason to hide the result. The page can report exactly what was observed: an identified electronic record with a Dewey value. It cannot report a verified hardcover value when the separately retrieved hardcover record did not contain one. The two outcomes remain distinct even though the work is the same.

Sources: [1] [3]

A practical reading exercise without assuming human perception

Choose one sensory example from the book and write a short account twice. In the first version, describe only what a human standing nearby might notice. In the second, describe the additional kind of signal that the book says the animal can use. Then identify which part is a reported finding and which part is your attempt to imagine the experience. This exercise makes the central question concrete without pretending that a human reader can directly reproduce another species' perception.

Sources: [1]

A useful follow-up is to ask how a researcher could test the claim. Would an experiment need to vary light, sound, chemical cues or another input? What observable response would count as evidence? You do not need to conduct an experiment to use those questions while reading. They help separate a vivid description from the observational or experimental basis behind it. That distinction is particularly valuable for a title whose appeal comes from taking readers beyond familiar sensory experience.

Sources: [1]

Compare animal perception with a tour of the human body

Bill Bryson's The Body has 612 in the selected record and headings for human anatomy and physiology. Yong's electronic record has 591.5 and includes animal behaviour as well as sensory and physiological headings. Both can interest a reader curious about how living bodies work, but the scale of comparison differs. Bryson's record centres the human body; Yong's makes variation among animal experiences a central route into the subject. Shared vocabulary such as physiology does not erase that difference.

Sources: [4] [1]

For a reading group, compare what each description treats as its starting point. Is the human body the object being explained, or is familiar human experience the limitation the author asks readers to move beyond? That question gives the pairing a purpose. The books need not be read as competing answers to the same problem. Their catalogue descriptions point to two complementary enquiries, and their numbers remain attached to the particular editions represented rather than being general labels for all sensory science.

Sources: [4] [1]

A different question about nonhuman life

The Hidden Life of Trees has 582.16 in the selected 2016 English-translation record, with headings for trees and forest ecology. It offers another example of a popular book asking readers to reconsider familiar organisms. Yet the source descriptions identify distinct subjects: a forest and its ecological relationships in one case, animal sensation and behaviour in the other. The presence of vivid language about nonhuman life is not enough to classify the books as the same kind of biological study.

Sources: [5] [1]

A useful comparison asks what evidence supports the language used about an organism. In a discussion of animal senses, look for the signal and sensory response. In a discussion of forest relationships, look for the particular ecological interaction being described. Avoid moving a metaphor unchanged from one book into the other. This gives the related reading a specific intellectual task: learning to distinguish an accessible description from the biological process and evidence it represents.

Sources: [5]

What to request when the electronic version matters

For a course that specifies the EPUB, use the electronic ISBN and full subtitle together. The local library's ebook platform will supply access and borrowing information, while the catalogue record supplies the bibliographic match. If you instead need a printed copy, follow the print record and inspect its holdings. This page makes the electronic match explicit so that a reader can obtain the intended format without mistaking the successful ebook classification check for a successful check of every edition.

Sources: [1] [2]

Sources for this edition guide

1. Library of Congress: selected edition record
2. Penguin Random House Library Marketing: EPUB ISBN 9780593133248
3. Library of Congress: separately checked hardcover record
4. The Body: selected human physiology record
5. The Hidden Life of Trees: selected forest ecology record