Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel
By Carl Safina
Henry Holt And Co., January, 2015
When I picked up Carl Safina’s book, Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel, I expected to learn about communication among animals, a subject that combined my interest in languages and love of wild animals. The 2015 book focuses on the behavior, communication skills and culture of elephants, wolves, whales, dolphins and crows. What I didn’t expect is how deeply this book would increase my wonder for nature and deepen my understanding of the Earth’s ecosystem.
Safina, a Ph.D. in ecology, has received numerous prestigious prizes including the MacArthur Foundation (“genius”) award and recognition from the Pew and Guggenheim foundations. In Beyond Words, he explains complex scientific principles in a way that is clear to those of us without much science background. He presents examples of animal communication and behavior that amaze, delight and make us question whether we really are the most important creatures in the universe. It is an elegantly written, compelling book; infused with compassion for other species on our planet.
Safina draws from many different realms of scientific study and, unlike other scientists who fear that they will be accused of anthropomorphism, is open to new understandings of supposedly settled questions. Instead of asking, “How are other animals similar to us? Do they like us?” Safina says we should observe them and ask, “Who are you?” Safina is humbled by the intelligence of animals that we have dismissed as lesser than us without trying to understand how they communicate and why they behave as they do.
The stories of all the animals described in the book are fascinating and moving, from elephants grieving over the bones of a deceased member of their herd to the cunning strategies displayed by wolves to feed their young to the surprising intelligence of crows.
Relying on long-term research and observation of other species’ personalities, communities and communication methods, Safina maintains that they are conscious, aware, sensitive and emotional, each species in their own way. They communicate in the methods they need to in order to live their lives. Sentience occurs in different ways and at different levels according to how the animals have evolved, the tasks they must do to survive, the societies they create and yes, the feelings they express. They are not human, but we share much with them.
Safina spent time with the devoted researcher Cynthia Moss, who has spent nearly 50 years observing wild elephants in Amboselli National Park, which spans Kenya and Tanzania, sitting in a Jeep compiling data on wild elephants’ behavior and communication. (See https://elephanttrust.org/). Since the publication of Beyond Words, researchers led by Joyce Poole and Petter Granli of ElephantVoices have released an elephant ethogram, a database of the behavior and communication of African savanna elephants. It is an astonishing documentation of the language and behavior of another species.
For most of my life I’d never given much thought to elephants. Then some friends took me to a documentary about these magnificent animals and the efforts to save them from poaching, habitat loss, and brutality used to make them perform for tourists, as well as their forced and unnatural labor in the logging industry and the effects of climate change on their ability to thrive. I had no idea of the abuses they suffer. I was unaware that they are murdered for their tusks for the corrupt ivory trade; leaving motherless calves, herds without a matriarch and threatening extinction. As the book makes clear, humans are killing off other sentient beings with which we share this planet, each with its own role in the ecosystem.
There are, however, organizations like the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya that are saving one orphaned baby elephant or rhino at a time. There are numerous groups dedicated to saving endangered species through advocacy and public policy. And Safina himself founded The Safina Center, which seeks to “… fuse scientific understanding, emotional connection, and a moral call to action.”
Reading Beyond Words, we come to understand that we are all interconnected, a life-saving concept during a time of pandemic.
Perhaps Leonardo da Vinci best expressed the outlook of this book long ago when he said, “To develop a complete mind: Study the science of art; Study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
Reviewed by Kathy Parrent, founder and editor of this website.
Go to our videos page to see a “Ted Talk” with Carl Safina.
