Animal Talk: Breaking the Codes of Animal Language [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

Surveying the research on communication between animals at every level of complexity, from insects to birds to marine mammals, science journalist Friend strikes a mother lode of popular interest; rare are the owners who, delighting in the antics of their pets, don't believe animals are "saying" something. But the subjective anecdote lacks the rigor science insists on; so Friend has looked up authors of interesting professional papers and interviewed them. Stars such as chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall are here, but readers will be most intrigued by the unheralded figures Friend found, such as a "real-life [Dr.] Doolittle" named Eugene Morton, who devised a typology of vocalizations for understanding most animals' intentions. Translating this material into accessible prose, Friend organizes it by the modes of animal communication: sound, light, physical posturing, ground vibrations, and pheromones. Here are the "languages" of particular species such as fireflies, albatrosses, elephants, and orcas, and animal lovers are sure to be enthralled. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Adult/High School–A science reporter shows how a "new generation of scientists" has been "contributing to an increasingly rich appreciation for the intelligence and emotions that lie behind… animal eyes." Though it seems obvious now that life-forms evolving together on the same planet could be expected to have much in common, Western culture has denied human kinship with animals. Friend outlines the origins and fallacies behind the old beliefs; he also draws a distinction between anthropomorphizing and figuring out what people have in common with other species. A growing school of thought asserts that there is "one language with few words, and all species, including humans, continue to use it every day." Friend says that the sole topics of conversation, "regardless of race or species, [are] sex, real estate, who's boss, and what's for dinner." He illustrates his thesis with clear explanations of the science behind fascinating and far-ranging discoveries throughout the world and among many species. Much of the new knowledge has been made possible by new technology that allows us to detect, record, and analyze signals that were formerly beyond our perception, such as electrical signals or inaudible sounds. The information is organized into chapters such as "The Chemistry of Love," "Songs and Shouts," and "Flash and Dance," and the pages containing unexpurgated information about randy dolphin behavior, same-sex relationships in many species, wild elephant parties, and human pheromones will appeal to teens.–Christine C. Menefee, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

"Tim Friend has just created something of a Rosetta stone for understanding what creatures are saying, in his new book, Animal Talk."

-- The Boston Globe

"Delightful, entertaining, and instructive."

-- Publishers Weekly

"If you love animals, you'll love this book."

-- Patricia B. McConnell, Ph.D., author of the bestselling The Other End of the Leash: Why We Do What We Do Around Dogs

"An entertaining and thought-provoking tour of scientific thought."

-- Toronto Sun

"Friend flies from species to species and continent to continent, taking readers on a terrific tour of the squeaking, squawking, roaring, and raging world of animal communication. He's an excellent guide."

-- American Scientist

The first book to tell the grand story of animal communication to the lay reader and to reveal unique insights into how systems of communication in the animal kingdom may have provided the foundation for our own language.

An authoritative study of the mysteries of animal communication draws on the latest scientific research and real-life animal stories to explain the diverse ways in which wild animals of various species communicate with one another.

Tim Friend is the senior science writer for USA Today. During his sixteen-year career at the newspaper, he has covered a broad range of topics including animal behavior, anthropology, physics, astronomy, biotechnology, and genetics. He has reported stories from Mount Everest, Antarctica, the Arctic Circle, the Amazon Rain Forest, the Middle East, Central America, and from a one-person submersible on the ocean floor. In addition to his work with USA Today, he has written for national magazines, including National Wildlife and Men's Health. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

Chapter One: A Walk in the Park: Toward a Universal Language

Just before midnight, I crawl off my hammock and slip quietly from under the blessed drapes of mosquito netting. The kerosene lanterns have been dimmed to barely a flicker across the long raised wooden platform that serves as our base camp in the tropical rain forest of northwestern Peru. The platform is in the center of a clearing next to the bank of a small tributary that feeds into the Napo River half a mile away. I arrived with four other journalists and a guide late in the afternoon after hiking through the muddy and tangled jungle since early morning. We have joined two scientists, a few camp cooks, and the drunken pilot of a Cessna seaplane, who arrived just before dinner. The pilot is supposed to give us a flyover of the region first thing after breakfast. As much Johnny Walker Red scotch as he was putting away tonight, he'll still be drunk when we take off on the river early in the morning. The bush pilot's creed is, If you can't fly drunk, you can't fly.

This is my first trip to the Amazon rain forest. The closest I have come to a jungle until now is the tangled thicket of the Ozarks, where I grew up. Surprisingly, there are a lot of similarities, especially in the number of things that bite, sting, scratch, and burn. At the moment, the others in the expedition party are snoring. But that isn't why I'm awake. There's a raucous party going on -- with lots of wild action by the strange and wondrous creatures all around our campsite. The night is teeming with sounds that seem louder and more intriguing than anything I have ever heard.

A minute ago, high in the canopy just beyond the camp's perimeter, something big crashed through the leaves. The only creature large enough around here to make such noise is a sloth. True to its name, it does not seem to be in much of a hurry. Bats have been fluttering since dusk through the rafters of the thatched roof above the platform. Earlier this evening, one swooped down and snatched a tarantula that was crawling up a colleague's mosquito netting. We could hear a soft crunch as the bat caught the spider with its teeth and darted off with its dinner into the night.

Beyond the camp, in vibrant surround sound, tree frogs and insects are laying down a soulful, energetic chorus like a choir at an old-fashioned Southern tent revival. Unfamiliar birds and nocturnal monkeys overlay the chorus with melodies and their own unique lyrics. This is one party I am not going to miss despite the rather condescending warning of the scientists not to leave camp alone at night. We could get lost or worse, they cautioned. I spend quite a bit of time in the field, but no matter where I travel, scientists tend to treat journalists like bad children who need constant supervision. Their admonishment only heightens my resolve to sneak out of camp.

The main attraction of this remote spot in the jungle is a canopy walkway constructed with ladders and suspension bridges that leads 115 feet straight up to the tops of the trees. Ordinarily, getting to the upper canopy entails climbing with harnesses and ropes. This is no simple task and usually involves close encounters of the unpleasant kind with nasty things that sting, burn, and bite. The canopy walkway, which bears a strong resemblance to the Swiss family Robinson's tree house, is a vast improvement on grappling and slapping one's way up. As far as I know, only a few of these walkways exist in the world. Tonight, this one is going to be my stairway to heaven.

I am on a mission and have a woefully short time to fulfill it: to learn how animals communicate with each other and what they spend so much time chattering to each other about. At this point, my quest seems absolutely overwhelming. Real experts devote entire careers to studying a single species of animal and are still left with many more questions than answers at the end of the day. My head is full of questions, too, which I plan to explore and explain in this book: If animal behavior is mostly instinctual, as scientists generally thought for more than a hundred years, why do animals need to communicate? If animals are thinking creatures and capable of emotions, as a growing number of scientists now believe, do their signals convey information (similar to our words)? Or are animals merely snarling or cooing to manipulate each other's behavior to get something they want (as we also often do)? How did the colorful, noisy, and smelly signals of the animal kingdom arise in the first place? Is any animal system of communication similar to human language? Do animals ever lie or attempt to deceive each other when communicating? Do the chirps, barks, and roars of different species have anything in common or follow predictable rules or patterns? Can a bird understand a monkey? Do species learn to communicate or is it all programmed by genes? To what extent is human communication, both verbal and nonverbal, programmed into our genes?

Scientists have been asking questions like these and working hard at finding the answers for more than a century, but there have been an enormous number of recent discoveries about animal communication. Studies on communication among tree frogs alone could fill a book. The eminent sociobiologist E. O. Wilson and the entomologist Bert Hölldobler produced a 732-page tome devoted to ants. I have three books in my home library on cichlid fishes, seven devoted to primates, five on dogs, more than a dozen on various species of birds. Most books focus on a single behavior, such as courtship rituals among birds, or the social behavior of primates, or the chemical signals of insects.

Yet surprisingly few books written for the general public have focused on the great range of animal communication. Usually, these books devote only a chapter or two to songs, dances, and scents. So my challenge here is to draw from the wealth of research conducted by hundreds of scientists and present the bigger picture of animal talk in the wild. The Amazon rain forest seemed like the best place to get a full immersion in nature and to begin eavesdropping on some animal conversations.

The few remaining unspoiled rain forests of the world are nature's Manhattan, London, and Tokyo -- bustling organic metropolises with their own laws that govern every creature equally from conception through life and into death. The laws of nature demand procreation and a fight for survival, but the means developed to achieve those ends are tremendously varied. Mother Nature has fostered all manner of societies, cultures, learning, gaming, altruism, deception, cooperation, competition, industries, arms races, and intelligence. Look closely at any habitat and you can find daily dramas involving struggles between predators and prey, elaborate courtships, covert copulations, sibling rivalries, struggles for dominance, defense of territories, and many, many opportunities to arrive at a premature death. The same dramas are played out all over the world in every environment, from the deep ocean vents where microscopic life may have begun to the lawns and shrubs only a few steps away in the backyard.

Communication between all of the earth's creatures makes these dramas possible. Indeed, communication is the glue of animal societies. Without a means of communicating, no life, including the simplest single-celled organisms, could exist. Communication, like the tango, takes two. And it requires a signal, which can be anything from the release of chemicals between colonizing bacteria, to the come-hither flashes between male and female fireflies in the backyard, to the "let's go" rumble of African elephants, to the "signature" whistles of dolphins, to a dog barking simply to be let outside.

Over the course of our journey we will explore the origins of communication and how all of the marvelous signals employed by...