Can you make a duck blink? Probably not. But you can try, in this irreverent and hilarious staring contest between you and a duck that never, ever blinks.

Have you ever wondered how animals perceive the world around us? Whether they see the same colors we see? Whether the vision of a fish is blurry underwater like ours? Or whether dogs like to watch TV, or cats really can see in the dark? If you have ever wished you could ask the animals themselves, don't worry, because the book you are holding in your hands holds the answers to these questions and many more.

"On a clear May afternoon at the end of his junior year at Harvard, Howard Axelrod left his dorm-room to play a pick-up game of basketball. In the skirmish for a loose ball, a boy's finger hooked behind Axelrod's eyeball and severed his optic nerve. Permanently blinded in his right eye, Axelrod returned a week later to the same dorm-room, but to a different world. A world where nothing looked solid, where the smooth veneer of reality had been broken,...