Review by Choice Review
Do you really think that guppies in a fish tank swim around aimlessly for your entertainment? New perspectives in ethology and new technologies have trashed old homocentric dogmas. Researchers like Dugatkin (Univ. of Louisville) show that many (probably all) animals from guppies to elephants have social networks as the rule, rather than the exception. New questions have required new instruments, and new instruments have made possible new answers. Guppies can't carry cellphones, but a remarkable number of species can have cell-phone equivalents: passive integrated transponders, radio-frequency antennae, satellite GPS tracking, and proximity sensors, linked by the internet, making data collection on "who's with whom" possible in real time. Chapters cover networks related to feeding, breeding, dominance, safety, traveling, health, communication, and "culture." Beyond primates, examples range from whales to dolphins and elephants to hyraxes. Each chapter is enriched by multiple detailed field studies, evoking the habitat, the organisms' behavior, and the impressions of the researchers. Dugatkin demonstrates that social networks are ubiquitous and the rule among species rather than the exception. They are essential to survival. Ethologists, too, form a network, each enriching the studies of other researchers and other species. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --Joanna Burger, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Humans are very social animals, and our ability to thrive and prosper is often based on whom we know. As well-published animal behaviorist and evolutionary biologist Dugatkin explains in this engaging look at social networking in the animal kingdom, information on how others in the group behave really matters. Survival and well-being is all about this flow of information and how group members react. Dugatkin examines the behavioral networking of species as diverse as rhesus macaques and elephants, manta rays and vampire bats, and long-tailed manakins and rock hyraxes. As he looks at how social networking improves individual chances for mating success, successful rearing of offspring, access to food sources, and beyond, he also discusses the hardships and myriad techniques and frustrations of doing field work in diverse and challenging habitats around the planet. This terrific survey of how animals of different species relate to each other on individual and group levels reads like a scientific mystery as Dugatkin vividly and compellingly describes exciting breakthroughs.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An engaging exploration of the interconnectedness of the animal world. Our belief in human exceptionalism has long included the dogma that we are the only animals that create complex social networks--but we are wrong. In this compelling book, evolutionary biologist Dugatkin, author of The Imitation Factor and Principles of Animal Behavior, notes that while the study of complex non-human social networks is a fairly young discipline, new research is occurring at a rapid pace. As one example, we now know reciprocal altruism drives vampire bats, who are most likely to share cocktails of their own blood with drinking buddies--bat friends who have done the same in the past. Another example: Dolphins help the Laguna people in Brazil by using their sonar to locate mullet; then they alert each other and nearby fishermen to the fish by slapping the water en masse, sending them into nets (and smiling dolphin mouths). Barbary macaques are prosocial animals, warning friends--but not acquaintances--of bad weather. Also prosocial are goats, who, like human teenagers, have friends, enemies, and frenemies. The author also looks at Sonso chimpanzees, who speak a rich language of more than 120 common gestures; honeybees, whose "dances" direct hives to food; the "giant dolphin mugshot book" compiled by researchers showing that dolphins teach each other to use sponge tools; and silvereye birds, who produce more than 60 syllables in a vernacular so expressive that neurologists study it to better comprehend the origins of the human spoken word. "It's time to scratch off another item from the 'what makes humans unique' list," writes Dugatkin, adding, "Everywhere, and in every context, animals are embedded in networks." This book makes a fitting companion to Ed Yong's An Immense World. An entertaining tour of what we learn as we eavesdrop on the non-human conversations all around us. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
