Intriguing but not entirely convincing.
The director of the Animal Language Institute gives an affirmative answer to the question: “Do animals have language?”
Slobodchikoff (Biology/North Arizona Univ.; Autobiography of a Poodle, 2012, etc.) has closely studied the behavior of rodentlike prairie dogs for years and is convinced that the chirps they emit when they perceive a dangerous situation deliberately communicate information that is ordinarily inaudible to human listeners. He and his students have digitally analyzed the prairie dogs’ 10-second alarm calls (which to us sound like cheeps) and correlated these to specific environmental stimuli. Slobodchikoff argues that the sounds contain “as much information to prairie dogs as a long, drawn-out sentence would for us.” Along with several other experiments showing that chickens, monkeys and other animals routinely identify predators by different calls, this provides the basis for the author’s contention that animal signaling is in fact a language. Slobodchikoff presents his view in opposition to behaviorists, whom he characterizes as believing that “animals aren't even conscious of their own existence, much less anyone else's.” He does not claim that animal communications are comparable to human discourse, but suggests that recognizing they, too, have a primitive kind of language constitutes an important step toward the recognition of our fundamental kinship. Slobodchikoff believes that animals communicate information intentionally, and this shapes their mental representation of the environment in which they live. Nor is their use of language restricted to the realm of sound, he writes. Dogs signal the boundaries of their territory by leaving odors, squid change color, etc. The author concludes that we need to extend our study of language in other species to the entire “Discourse System” necessary to produce it, including specialized areas of the brain devoted to understanding and producing language.
Intriguing but not entirely convincing.Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-61179-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.
An account of the mysterious life of eels that also serves as a meditation on consciousness, faith, time, light and darkness, and life and death.
In addition to an intriguing natural history, Swedish journalist Svensson includes a highly personal account of his relationship with his father. The author alternates eel-focused chapters with those about his father, a man obsessed with fishing for this elusive creature. “I can’t recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream,” he writes. “I can’t remember us speaking at all….Because we were in…a place whose nature was best enjoyed in silence.” Throughout, Svensson, whose beat is not biology but art and culture, fills his account with people: Aristotle, who thought eels emerged live from mud, “like a slithering, enigmatic miracle”; Freud, who as a teenage biologist spent months in Trieste, Italy, peering through a microscope searching vainly for eel testes; Johannes Schmidt, who for two decades tracked thousands of eels, looking for their breeding grounds. After recounting the details of the eel life cycle, the author turns to the eel in literature—e.g., in the Bible, Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea Wind, and Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum—and history. He notes that the Puritans would likely not have survived without eels, and he explores Sweden’s “eel coast” (what it once was and how it has changed), how eel fishing became embroiled in the Northern Irish conflict, and the importance of eel fishing to the Basque separatist movement. The apparent return to life of a dead eel leads Svensson to a consideration of faith and the inherent message of miracles. He warns that if we are to save this fascinating creature from extinction, we must continue to study it. His book is a highly readable place to begin learning.
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-296881-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
A magnificent account of a central reality of our times, incorporating deep scientific expertise, broad political and social knowledge, and ethical insight, and Idled with beautifully written biographical sketches of the men and women who created nuclear physics. Rhodes describes in detail the great scientific achievements that led up to the invention of the atomic bomb. Everything of importance is examined, from the discovery of the atomic nucleus and of nuclear fission to the emergence of quantum physics, the invention of the mass-spectroscope and of the cyclotron, the creation of such man-made elements as plutonium and tritium, and implementation of the nuclear chain reaction in uranium. Even more important, Rhodes shows how these achievements were thrust into the arms of the state, which culminated in the unfolding of the nuclear arms race. Often brilliantly, he records the rise of fascism and of anti-Semitism, and the intensification of nationalist ambitions. He traces the outbreak of WW II, which provoked a hysterical rivalry among nations to devise the bomb. This book contains a grim description of Japanese resistance, and of the horrible psychological numbing that caused an unparalleled tolerance for human suffering and destruction. Rhodes depicts the Faustian scale of the Manhattan Project. His account of the dropping of the bomb itself, and of the awful firebombing that prepared its way, is unforgettable. Although Rhodes' gallery of names and events is sometimes dizzying, his scientific discussions often daunting, he has written a book of great drama and sweep. A superb accomplishment.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1986
ISBN: 0684813785
Page Count: 932
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1986
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