Mr. Darcy, What an Irresistible Scent!

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. Fun fact, the urine of male mice contains a pheromone that attracts female mice to the odor of that particular male. Now, Grant, I know we don’t often talk about mouse urine on the show, but today is a special day because there is a literary connection.

Fun fact. I’m not sure that’s fun.

Just wait. Hear me out. Hear me out.

This pheromone is called Darsin, D-A-R-C-I-N, and it’s named for Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.

Oh, wow.

How about that?

Because he’s attractive. He’s attracting the women.

Exactly. But you’ll learn this and much more in a new book by Ed Young.

It’s called An Immense World, and it describes the diversity of sensory perception in the animal world and how animals’ experience of our environment differs from our own.

Now, Ed Young has science chops. He won a Pulitzer for his coverage of COVID, but he also writes with a literary sensibility.

And here’s another cool word I learned from his book, orripulation.

Spell that.

Oripulation. O-R-I-P-U-L-A-T-I-O-N. Oripulation.

And what in the world is that?

Well, it’s how manatees explore their surroundings. They have incredibly sensitive lips. And so oripulation is like manipulation, but it’s with the mouth. And manatees greet each other that way.

They oripulate each other’s faces in flippers.

Yeah, yeah, kind of like a smooch.

And at one point, Ed Young describes climbing into a tank with a manatee named Hugh. And he writes, reader, Hugh orripulated me.

That would be amazing.

I would like to try that.

I would like to meet a manatee, first of all.

Wouldn’t you like to meet a manatee?

Yeah, he talks about looking down and the manatee is doing the manatee version of zoomies, whatever that is.

Right, running back and forth, swimming back and forth.

That’s very cute.

But kind of slow, I think.

But anyway, I think you’d also really like this book, and I’m going to talk about it a little more later in the show.

That’s fantastic.

And Ed Young’s book is called?

An Immense World.

We’ll talk about Ed Young and An Immense World later in the show, and of course we’ll link to it on the website.

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