Enthralling accounts of three animals that lead complex social lives and deserve to continue living.
Humans possess culture, but so do animals according to this compelling account of three nonhuman societies: sperm whales, scarlet macaws, and chimpanzees.
Nature writer, activist, TV host, and founder of the Safina Center, the author notes that animals learn from their elders how to fit in, communicate, search for food, and identify friends and strangers. This is culture, and it’s not inherited. “An individual receives genes only from its parents,” writes the author, “but can receive culture from anyone and everyone in the social group…and because culture improves survival, culture can lead where genes must follow and adapt.” During the 1950s, Navy personnel listening for Russian submarines were astonished to hear elaborate, beautiful songs that turned out to come from whales. As a result of the bestselling recording, “whales went from being ingredients of margarine in the 1960s to spiritual icons of the 1970s emerging environmental movement.” Safina’s lovely account of his travels with researchers studying sperm whales reveals a majestic, closely knit community. Turning to scarlet macaws, every one of which knows its friends and avoids macaws that don’t belong, the author wonders what happens to a social organism after a few thousand generations. In traditional evolution, new species appear when isolation (due to a river, mountain range, etc.) allows the changes of Darwinian natural selection to spread throughout one group but not others. Don’t animal cultures produce a similar reproductive isolation? In fact, cultural selection, although controversial, may act as another engine of evolution. Our closest relatives, chimpanzees, share 98% of our genes as well as many cultural traits, especially a fractious social system in which macho males compete for leadership with more violence than seems reasonable. Most books on natural history include pleas for preservation of the wild, and Safina’s is no exception. Sadly, none of his subjects are thriving, and few readers will doubt that these magnificent creatures need urgent attention.
Enthralling accounts of three animals that lead complex social lives and deserve to continue living.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-17333-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A panoramic view of life on earth from a Nobel laureate in physiology and Rockefeller University professor emeritus. Key words in this 4-billion-year chronology are ``complementarity,'' ``spontaneity,'' and ``congruence.'' De Duve (A Guided Tour of the Living Cell, not reviewed) is no miracle monger regarding the development of life. Basic physio-chemical forces permitted the spontaneous coming together of primordial molecules: They fit by means of complementary parts—the key-and- lock principle that would play out in the double helix, antigen- antibody reactions and the cell-cell communication characteristic of multicellular organisms. All this prebiotic sorting and shifting led to what de Duve calls ``protometabolism,'' which would be fully congruent to the chemical processes essential to life. Fully half this text is taken up with the most ancestral forms: protocells and bacteria, the latter splitting into the heat-loving forms found in subterranean thermal vents and the ``eubacteria'' that, de Duve hypothesizes, emerged to conquer the world when climate changed and, through a mutation, were able to adapt to a cooler world. Other crises would follow: Photosynthesis would enrich the atmosphere with toxic oxygen. Finally cells with nuclei emerged, coming together into complex differentiated life forms. So the story unfolds with crisis followed by opportunities down to the present, when human life predominates. Not the be-all and end-all, de Duve affirms—and particularly not at the rate we are disturbing the environment. Indeed, much of the latter part of the book is taken up with issues and schools of thought: mind-body dualism, the Gaia hypothesis, existentialist ``absurd'' philosophy versus Teilhard de Chardin's teleology. De Duve himself opts for a ``meaningful universe''; he believes that life is ``bound to arise under the prevailing conditions'' and exists elsewhere in the universe. This is a heady book with much conjecture and rumination. Withal, the reader cannot help but share de Duve's sense of joy and wonder at the chance and necessity that have created life on earth.
Pub Date: Jan. 25, 1995
ISBN: 0-465-09044-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
+ A journalist's revealing overview of the construction, engineering, and financial, political, and technical resources required to build the railway tunnel that now connects the sceptered isle of England with continental Europe by way of France. Drawing on a wealth of sources, including interviews with principals who got the immensely expensive job done, Newsday correspondent Fetherston provides a start-to-finish account of the so-called Chunnel project, which opens with a brief review of the false starts and alternative proposals that had been made over the years. He goes on to recount how Margaret Thatcher and Franáois Mitterand created a binational commission to study the possibility of an underwater link. Despite the Tory prime minister's insistence that no government money be spent, spirited opposition from ferry interests, the stock market crash of 1987, and other obstacles, the enterprise gained sufficient momentum and funding (from lenders in two dozen countries) for work to begin. Owing to a notably hostile operating environment as well as marked differences in national construction practices and standards, the Anglo-French contracting consortium experienced ongoing difficulties. In the fall of 1990, however, British and French excavators achieved a significant breakthrough, meeting at a midpoint beneath the English Channel. Now in service, the Chunnel encompasses three continuous tubes (each more than 49 kilometers in length) from Folkestone to Coquelles, plus dozens of cross-passages and chambers whose uses range from equipment storage through train switching. Despite signs of popularity with shippers and tourists, the spectacular submarine facility has yet to prove economic; plagued by past cost overruns and a staggering debt burden, in fact, the Chunnel remains years- -perhaps decades—from break-even. A tellingly detailed rundown on a remarkable undertaking that could prove either an eighth wonder of the modern world or one of commercial/industrial history's great white elephants. (69 illustrations)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-8129-2198-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
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