The sounds of life How digital technology is bringing us closer to the worlds of animals and plants

Bakker (Univ. of British Columbia) asks an almost overwhelming set of questions and offers equally daunting answers. Are animals and plants communicating--and can we understand them? Connecting natural sounds to Indigenous languages is perhaps far-fetched, but in no way detracts. Earlier chapters are perhaps more relatable: readers may easily accept that whales send messages, while finding leaf and coral language less plausible. Bakker introduces creatures known to produce sounds (whales, elephants, turtles, bats) and tells the story of scientific studies--including the latest in digital bioacoustics--to capture such sounds to discover their purpose and meaning. Of particular interest to this reader is the work on bats. Bakker also revisits the 20th-century studies of honeybee communications (i.e., the waggledance), leading to the latest insights about swarm behaviors and even to creation of a "RoboBee" to test communications with bees through their own language. Bakker further reveals new cross-species communication efforts as represented by the Interspecies Internet project, a digital bioacoustics project (Whale Safe) to protect cetaceans from ships, and efforts to establish a universal ecoacoustics index to capture "nature's chorus" and protect the biosphere. This accessible account covers so much more than sound--though that is foremost--up to and including nonlinguistic information transfer, and is supported by nearly 100 pages of references. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. --Francis W. Yow, emeritus, Kenyon College

Bakker (Water Teachings), director of the University of British Columbia's Program on Water Governance, takes stock of the technology that's being developed to help humans "listen to nonhumans in powerful ways." Such innovations are "reviving our connection to the natural world," Bakker writes: scientists have discovered that turtles use "an underwater communication system with a repertoire of complex sound"; are using algorithms to "talk to plants"; have discerned that fish make noises (one of the "first documented instances of fish noise" was thanks to a mic wrapped in a condom); and are developing "bee-imitating robots" that can communicate with honeybees. Bakker is optimistic that such technological developments will enhance "our ability to monitor organisms and ecosystems and detect environmental change," and he maintains an inspiring perspective on what scientists are discovering in the face of humans' limited sensory capacities: "Although these calls are some of the loudest ever recorded in the animal kingdom, they are inaudible to us," the author writes of echolocation. "Even the loudest ultrasonic sound blown directly into our ears would feel like nothing more than an empty, ghostly breath of wind." Nature lovers won't regret tuning in. (Oct.)