Arik Kershenbaum is the author of the new book Why Animals Talk: The New Science of Animal Communication. He also has written the book The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy. He teaches at Girton College, University of Cambridge.
Q: What inspired you to write Why Animals Talk, and how did you choose the animals to highlight?
A: The animals inspired me! What is the point of studying life on Earth if we're going to keep all that information to ourselves? Everyone wants to know what animals are doing, what animals are thinking, and what animals are saying. I get a lot out of teaching college students about animal behaviour--it just makes total sense to tell the wider public about all the things we've discovered.
To a large extent, the animals that I chose are those that I've worked with in the field. That's because I think it's really important to understand how animals live their lives in the wild. It's almost impossible to understand these creatures without diving into their world.
OK, most people can't go out into the jungle in search of gibbons, or the forests looking for wolves, but if I can bring a little bit of that world back to people through describing the way this small number of species live their lives, that paints enough of a picture for everyone to understand better what the animal world is really like.
Q: One of the animals in the book that I was curious about was the hyrax. Can you say more about how it communicates?
A: Hyraxes are modest creatures. They're not regal tigers or majestic whales. They just get on with their simple lives: eating, mating, raising babies, and avoiding being eaten.
And yet, these supposedly simple creatures have incredibly complex communication. They sing long and involved songs that can go on for hundreds of notes.
Why so much complexity in communication, when they really don't need to say very much? There's an important clue here. Hyraxes, like a lot of songbirds, have very simple messages: "Come mate with me."
Yet they convey them in such a complex way because the complexity IS the message. Males are competing with each other to sing the most complex and impressive song.
Just because a message is complex doesn't mean that there's complex information in the message. This is really important when we consider the evolution of our own language, and what abilities our ancestors must have had to set themselves up for language itself to evolve.
Q: The Kirkus Review of the book says, “The author avoids the trap of thinking that animal communication is somehow inferior to human communication simply because it is different. Studying it lets us move away from the rigid notion of human exceptionalism and toward a better understanding of the world.” What do you think of that description?
A: We are very naturally trapped in a dilemma, because on the one hand, we want to believe that we are special creatures, and on the other hand, we want to feel ourselves a part of nature. We want to believe that animals can talk - our pet animals particularly - but we also want to believe that talking, and language, are special human abilities.
In fact, both are true. Language is indeed something special, and something that only humans seem to have. But language is really just another variation on the range of communicative strategies that animals use.
Some animals, like hyraxes, really don't have all that much to say. But that's no criticism of them. They are evolved exactly in the way that works best for them.
It's a huge mistake to think that animals are somehow "missing out" by not having language. Their communication is suited to their niches, and language like ours just isn't what they need. Just like, to be sure, we ourselves would really struggle if we had to live a day as a wolf, or a dolphin, or a hyrax.
Q: As someone who has been studying this topic for many years, what do you hope readers take away from your book?
A: View animals as they are, not as we want them to be. They are incredible, diverse, and impressive creatures, even if they don't write poetry like we do. They don't need to! But that doesn't make them any less important.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Currently I'm concentrating on my research - conservation of gibbons in Vietnam, and wolf behaviour in the USA. But I might be thinking about writing another book about animal behaviour...
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: There's always more to know! And there are so many good books out there to bring you into the world of animals. Some of the greatest observers of animals life have written really compelling works. I particularly love Jane Goodall's books. And David Attenborough's. And Ernest Thompson Seton. The list goes on and on...
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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