Why Animals Talk: The New Science of Animal Communication - Hardcover

Kershenbaum, Arik

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593654935 ISBN 13: 9780593654934

Verlag: Penguin Press, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

"Animal communication doesn’t need to resemble human language to be full of meaning and nuance. Arik Kershenbaum delivers an expert overview of the astonishing discoveries made in the last few decades" —Frans de Waal

From leading zoologist Arik Kershenbaum, a delightful and groundbreaking exploration of animal communication and its true meaning

Animal communication has forever seemed intelligible. We are surrounded by animals and the cacophony of sounds that they make—from the chirping of songbirds to the growls of lions on the savanna—but we have yet to fully understand why animals communicate the way they do. What are they saying? This is only part of the mystery. To go deeper, we must also ask, what is motivating them?

Why Animals Talk is an exhilarating journey through the untamed world of animal communication. Following his international bestseller, The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy, acclaimed zoologist Arik Kershenbaum draws on extensive original research to reveal how many of the animal kingdom’s most seemingly confusing or untranslatable signals are in fact logical and consistent—and not that different from our own. His fascinating deep dive into this timeless subject overturns decades of conventional wisdom, inviting readers to experience for the first time communication through the minds of animals themselves.

From the majestic howls of wolves and the enchanting chatter of parrots to the melodic clicks of dolphins and the spirited grunts of chimpanzees, these often strange expressions are far from mere noise. In fact, they hold secrets that we are just beginning to decipher. It’s one of the oldest mysteries that has haunted Homo sapiens for hundreds of thousands of years: Are animals talking just like us, or are we the only animals on the planet to have our own language?

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dr. Arik Kershenbaum is a zoologist, college lecturer and fellow at Girton College, University of Cambridge. He has done extensive fieldwork on animal communication: following wolves around Yellowstone National Park and the forests of central Wisconsin to uncover the meaning of their different kinds of howls, as well as decoding the whistles of dolphins among the coral reefs of the Red Sea, the songs of gibbons in the jungles of Vietnam and the songs of hyraxes in the mountains of the Galilee. He holds a PhD from the University of Haifa and a higher doctorate from the University of Cambridge.

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1. Wolf

It's very cold. Even among the dense trees where there's no wind, the air stings. At first, the silence feels so intense you could be the only creature in the world, never mind in the forest-except that little rustlings of rodents in the snow remind you that there is life all around, albeit indifferent to your presence. Maybe there are other creatures out there too. Larger creatures. Soon, a low-pitched howling like the wind begins, rising slowly and mournfully before the pitch falls again. Another animal joins in. It's an unmistakable sound and it sends a shiver through anyone hearing it. They're calling across what seems to the casual observer an empty world, but this is their home. There is nothing that reminds us of the wilderness quite like hearing the wolves calling. What are they saying? Are they as lonely as they sound? As threatening? I want to understand these creatures, who they are, what they are saying, why they do what they do. They are so different from us yet so similar. Of all the wild animals, these are the ones with which we have the closest bond. Why? Because we've taken their relatives into our homes as four-legged companions and molded them to our way of life, something that would not have been possible if we did not share so much to begin with. To understand wolves is to understand ourselves. So, where do we begin?

Humans respond viscerally to wolf howls. More than any other animal communication, this sound evokes feelings of a spiritual connection with nature. And feelings of danger. Personally, I find wolf howls beautifully calming. Here is a creature perfectly at home in a harsh environment. They need no warm house or advanced technology to survive. They can wander the forests just as we would wander our local neighborhood, without worrying about being too far from home. What features of body and mind do wolves need to survive where they do? A human in the same woods would find them terrifying, as a wolf would no doubt be terrified and lost in suburban London. The forest is a desolate place, but when you are surrounded by family, it is familiar and comforting. Bit by bit, animals evolve to take advantage of resources that others shun, from the frozen wastes to the deepest ocean. There's food in these forests, but to catch it, to survive, you must work as a team, rely on your friends and family, otherwise all is lost. Wolves do not howl to each other simply to threaten or to intimidate, but to communicate as casually as we might text a friend to find out how they're doing, where they're going. Shall we catch a bite to eat, or just hang out? This is an animal that wanders seemingly without concern dozens of miles over mountains and through forests in a single day, and yet never loses touch with friends and relatives, as long as they can howl. The howl defines the wolf as much as its fangs or fur. It is an essential tooth in the cog of their existence, meshing perfectly with the cog of their environment. You can't survive in the snow without fur. You can't survive in the forest without howling.

Wolves are our introduction to the world of animal communication. They are familiar enough to strike a chord but alien enough to show just how different from us animals are. They have that key characteristic for complex communication to evolve: they are highly social. Living in a group is the only way for them to survive in their environment, but group living has drawbacks too. They must negotiate the social environment, as well as the physical one, and they do that using complex communication. Do all wolf howls sound the same to you? They vary almost infinitely and carry that variation reliably over many miles. We can look at their howls and investigate how much meaning they contain, and how they evolved to be complex enough to contain any meaning at all. If we can do all that, can we tap into this? Can we interpret the communication that is their private domain, and then reply in kind?

Who are the wolves?

Wolves are one of the most difficult animals to study in the wild. You might have thought that the frontiers of scientific knowledge lie in the most distant galaxies, or in the heart of the atom, or at the depths of the ocean. On the contrary. We know comparatively little about the behavior of one of the most familiar animals on the planet. Wolves are exceptionally cautious creatures and avoid humans far more than the horror movies would have us believe. I'm often asked, "Aren't you scared that the wolves might attack you when you're out in the wilderness?" Well, no; no more than I fear skidding off an icy mountain road (actually, I am considerably less scared of the wolves than of the roads). Despite their sharp fangs and claws, and their ability to bring down elk, and even massive bison, wolves are wary. That is not surprising. Like most top predators, they live on a knife-edge between survival and starvation. Their lives hinge on the success or failure of a hunt, and a hunt can, and often does, end in near-fatal injuries for the predator as well as for the prey. In a fight for its life, a bison can use kicking hooves and sharp horns with lethal effect. For a wolf, caution is paramount. Humans are unfamiliar, unpredictable, and best avoided. Given that wolves can travel with breathtaking efficiency over rugged landscapes and deep snow, it's no wonder that, if they don't want to be near you, you won't get anywhere near them. Add to that the fact that much of their activity is at night or at dusk, and you can see that there must be much we still don't know about their lives.

Wolves have a special place in the hearts of many. We have all seen them on TV documentaries or in zoos, and some of you may have caught glimpses of them in the wild or heard snatches of their haunting howls. But even zoologists like me don't have a very clear window into the life of a wolf. Perhaps the most reliable and detailed insight into what it means to be a wolf comes from the long-term scientific studies of the wild populations in Yellowstone National Park in the USA. Here, scientists and volunteers follow wolves daily, observe them, get to know the individuals, and track their comings and goings, the ups and downs of their packs, over years and decades. Ernest Thompson Seton, the great naturalist and animal writer of the end of the nineteenth century said:

How many of us have ever got to know a wild animal? I do not mean merely to meet with one once or twice, or to have one in a cage, but to really know it for a long time while it is wild, and to get an insight into its life and history. The trouble usually is to know one creature from his fellow. One fox or crow is so much like another that we cannot be sure that it really is the same next time we meet.

There's deep truth in this. If you think about the songbirds or the squirrels in your garden, do you really know one from the other? Without recognizing individuals, the most we can know is an averaged, smeared-out knowledge of all members of a species put together. Spotting individuals, separating them and their behavior, and recognizing what they do as individuals is central to studying animal behavior as a scientist. To understand animals is to understand the stories of animals as individuals, observed in the wild, but recognized as separate from their brothers and sisters, and from strangers of the same species-who might look the same to us, but can be perceived as mortal enemies by the animals themselves.

The team that has studied the Yellowstone wolves since their reintroduction in 1995 spends long hours in freezing conditions, watching through spotting scopes as the animals do almost nothing. The wolves relax, play, or perhaps investigate some branch sticking out of the snow. Sometimes they hunt; sometimes they fight; sometimes they mate. But mostly they just hang out and be themselves. It's through those...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593654935
• ISBN 13: 9780593654934
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 273
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar