Are we really the most intelligent, creative and technologically advanced species on the planet? In this illuminating and provocative book, Giorgio Volpi takes us on a journey that dismantles our anthropocentric view of the world and shows that art, science and technology are by no means the preserve of human beings. The red-capped manakin, a small tropical bird, is famous for a display in which it performs a flawless Michael Jackson moonwalk. Cicadas of the genus Magicicada are among the finest timekeepers in nature: their extraordinarily long life cycles are perfectly synchronised, spent almost entirely underground before the insects emerge together only every 13 or 17 years. Stick insects are consummate actors: their bodies mimic dry twigs to fool predators and, when the wind catches them, they begin to sway just like the foliage of a plant. All of which is an invitation to an act of radical humility, and to the recognition that we are simply “an animal among other animals”. We are not the masters of the world but part of the great chorus of living things, in the colossal orchestra that is nature. Discovering nature today means understanding what it truly means to be human, and laying the foundations for a new society living in symbiosis with its environment: only then can we build a genuinely sustainable future.