A wonderful book, informative and poetic at the same time. Reminds you to appreciate the wonder and beauty of the natural world ( )

Animals

A fine read. Not just nature facts, but a great job of bringing you right into nature. And all the while, a fine thread of conservation woven through by reasoning, not moralizing. ( )

-see review for 'A Natural History of the Senses'. ( )

Diane Ackerman is a field biologist and, as you can tell by the title of this book, a poet.

There are four sections: bats, crocodilian species, whales and penguins. And although I would not have picked up a book on crocodiles, Ackerman’s writing made this family of beasties fascinating and entertaining.

I enjoyed the science, but especially enjoyed her flights into philosophy and poetry.

The section about whales is the longest, and for me, the most interesting. She tells of whale songs which have all the complexities of human songs: including repetitions and even the equivalent of human ‘rhyme schemes.’

When talking of whale songs:
“Suppose human beings evolved two forms of communication, “ I said, “one that is direct emotional communication -- music – and one that’s analytical and verbal, which we call language”. P 122

And this quote:

“…a mind is such an odd predicament for matter to get into. I often marvel how something like hydrogen, the simplest atom, forged in some early chaos of the universe, could lead to us and the gorgeous fever we call consciousness. If I mind is just a few pounds of blood, dream and electric, how does it manage to contemplate itself, worry about its soul, do time-and-motion studies, admire the shy hooves of a goat, know that it will die, enjoy all the grand and lesser mayhems of the hear What is mind, that one can be out of one’s? How can a neuron feel compassion? What is a self? Why did automatic, hand-me-down mammals like our ancestors somehow evolve brains with the ability to consider, imagine, project, compare, abstract, think of the future? If our experience of mind is really just the simmering of an easily alterable chemical stew, then what does it mean to know something, to want something, to be? How do you begin with hydrogen and end up with prom dresses, jealousy, chamber music? What is the music that it can satisfy such a mind, and even perhaps function as language?” p 131

Fascinating and highly readable 4 stars. ( )