Becoming Wild: How Animals Learn to be Animals

(Paperback)

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"Who are we What do we value How do we live here Guided by parents, carers, teachers and siblings, we learn to answer these questions as we grow up. But its not just us. Many animals must learn to answer them too. In Becoming Wild, Carl Safina reveals that culture, long thought exclusive to humankind, is abundant in the animal kingdom. Sperm whales in the Caribbean communicate through a system of clicks akin to Morse code, announcing which clan they belong to, which family and who they are individually. Among chimpanzees the obsession with male status may guarantee violence, even war, but they also have many ways to quell tensions. As Safina shows, the better we understand the animals with whom we share this planet, the less different from us they seem."

Reviews

[A] bracing and enlightening book Safinas writing on the watery depths and its denizens is sublime [challenging] us to be more acutely aware of species whose social lives have much to teach us.

-- SCIENCE

In this superbly articulate cri de coeur, Safina gives us a new way of looking at the natural world that is radically different.

-- Washington Post

Safina, the ecologist and author of many books about animal behavior, here delves into the world of chimpanzees, sperm whales and macaws to make a convincing argument that animals learn from one another and pass down culture in a way that will feel very familiar to us.

* New York Times, 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2020 *

A smorgasbord of compelling details . . . Becoming Wild could easily become a television series.

* Fortean Times *

Fascinating [Becoming Wild] gives the reader a sense of being near these creatures and experiencing some of the most seductive environments on Earth Safinas prose achieves the elusive goal of being both informative and luminously evocative.

* Wall Street Journal *

Carl Safina combines his passion for the natural world with absorbing, sometimes breathtaking prose, transporting us into the intimate, nuanced worlds of some of the planets most charismatic beings.

-- Jonathan Balcombe, author of What a Fish Knows

Eloquent This revelatory work sheds as much light on what it means to be human as it does on the nature of other species.

-- Publishers Weekly

Few readers will doubt that these magnificent creatures need urgent attention. Enthralling.

-- Kirkus, starred review

[Safina] turns the human view of animal cultures on its headBecoming Wilddemands that we wake up and realise that we are intrinsically linked to our other-than-human neighbours.

* Telegraph *

Dr. Safina is a terrific writer, majestic and puckish in equal measure.

* New York Times *

[Safina] is a font of research, his wonder contagious.

* Elle *

Safina puts forward several eye-opening and previously-overlooked implications of animal culture a pleasure to read another jewel in the crown of Safinas work that packs fascinating field studies, interesting theoretical ideas, soul-searching questions, and probing reflections on human and animal nature into a book that is as profound as it is moving.

* Inquisitive Biologist *

Author Bio

Carl Safina is an award-winning science writer whose previous books include Song for the Blue Ocean and Beyond Words. He has written for the Guardian, New York Times, TIME and National Geographic, among others. He is the first Endowed Professor for Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University, and founding president of the not-for-profit Safina Center. He lives on Long Island, New York, with his wife Patricia and their dogs and feathered friends.