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Bats, bees and birds are dying as humans overwhelm their advanced senses with sound and light

A bat clings onto the lower limbs of a Banyan tree due high temperature. (Sam Panthaky/AFP via Getty Images)
A bat clings onto the lower limbs of a Banyan tree due high temperature. (Sam Panthaky/AFP via Getty Images)

We all know about light and noise pollution — we consider it a nuisance. It might be harder to see the stars in the night sky or difficult to hear your colleagues talking over the sound of pneumatic drills on the street outside your office. For animals though, it’s more than annoying. It’s a disorienting death sentence with catastrophic consequences.

That’s the premise of author and Atlantic writer Ed Yong‘s riveting article “Our Blinding, Blaring World” excerpted from his recently released book “An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us.” Yong, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic, joins Here & Now‘s Robin Young to talk about the potential fallout of our inability to understand how animals navigate their environments.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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