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219from An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around UsEd Yong The following excerpt is from the 2022 best seller An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us , written by the Pulitzer Prize%u2013winning science journalist Ed Yong. QUESTIONS Understanding and Interpreting 1. In paragraph 1, why might Robin Wall Kimmerer%u2019s expression in her graduation photo not have matched her memory of the time? 2. By the end of the essay, how successfully has Kimmerer made the argument that her initial question constitutes a scientific inquiry? 3. Why does Kimmerer imagine she has always been keenly aware of and interested in goldenrod and asters? 4. In paragraph 16, what does Kimmerer suggest is the difference between the plants%u2019 names and their songs? As part of your response, consider what Kimmerer learns from the traditional knowledge of a Navajo woman in paragraph 19. Extending Beyond the Text 5 Robin Wall Kimmerer Since eyes define nature%u2019s palette, an animal%u2019s palette tells you whose eyes it is trying to catch.You can apply the same logic to flowers. In 1992, Lars Chittka and Randolf Menzel analyzed 180 flowers and worked out what kind of eye would be best at discriminating their colors. The answer %u2014 an eye with green, blue, and UV trichromacy %u2014 is exactly what bees and many other insects have. You might think that these pollinators evolved eyes that see flowers well, but that%u2019s not what happened. Their style of trichromacy evolved hundreds of millions of years before the first flowers appeared, so the latter must have evolved to suit the former. Flowers evolved colors that ideally tickle insect eyes.I find these connections profound, in a way that makes me think differently about the act of sensing itself. Sensing can feel passive, as if eyes and other sense organs were intake valves through which animals absorb and receive the stimuli around them. But over time, the simple act of seeing recolors the world. Guided by evolution, eyes are living paintbrushes. Flowers, frogs, fish, feathers, and fruit all show that sight affects what is seen, and that much of what we find beautiful in nature has been shaped by the vision of our fellow animals. Beauty is not only in the eye of the beholder. It arises because of that eye. 1. From an evolutionary standpoint, why would flowers benefit if they developed coloration that stood out to insects? And how does this coloration reciprocally benefit insects? 2. How does Yong%u2019s explanation flesh out Kimmerer%u2019s argument about the connection between natural beauty and science? Copyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.