Songs, Roars, and Rituals: Communication in Birds, Mammals, and Other Animals

by Leslie J. Rogers, Gisela Kaplan

From the calling macaw and the roaring lion to the dancing lyrebird, animals all around us can be heard and seen communicating with each other and, occasionally, with us. Why they do so, what their utterances mean, and how much we know about them are the subject of Songs, Roars, and Rituals . This is a concise, yet comprehensive, introduction to the complexities of communication in animals. Rogers and Kaplan take us on an exciting journey through communication in the animal world, offering insights on how animals communicate by sight, sound, smell, touch, and even electrical signaling. They explore a wide variety of communication patterns in many species of mammals and birds and discuss in detail how communication signals evolved, how they are learned, and what song and mimicry may mean. An up-to-date account of the science of animal communication, this book also considers modern concepts (such as that of deceptive communication) and modern controversies, primarily those surrounding the evolution of human language and the use of symbolic language by apes. It concludes with a thought-provoking look at the future of communication between humans and animals.

Genres: Science

224 pages, Paperback

First published September 18, 2000

Reviews

[E · Rating 2 out of 5]

I appreciate how often the authors insist that animal communication is so complex and our knowledge of it so limited that very few assumptions should be made regarding it. Too often anthropocentrism clouds our view of animals, leading to inaccurate conclusions, the best example being a layperson's emotional, self-centered interpretation of smiling as conveying pleasure or affection when most primates use it to indicate aggression.

Nevertheless, the authors still make what I consider to be broad assumptions. They assert that, unlike many animal species, all humans can distinguish between the sounds "ta" and "da," yet native speakers of many Asian languages do not. Unlike Steven Pinker, they are convinced that many primates have been taught sign language, but, unlike Pinker, give little evidence of it and even fewer details regarding the procedure. I neither believe nor doubt that primates lack the intelligence to learn grammatical structures or abstract words like "die" or "comfortable," but I do doubt the human capacity to teach such concepts to creatures about which we know so very little. More depth and detail would have strengthened such claims.

Science is fallible because it is conducted by humans who always risk seeing what they want to see, which the authors admirably emphasize. They both assert and demonstrate that often animals do not need us and an anthropocentric approach is dangerously limiting. When we assign human characteristics to animal communication, we obstruct our view of more complex structures that could tell us so much about the world we inhabit and our own selves.