Download or read book Dolphin Politics in Shark Bay written by Richard C Connor and published by . This book was released on 2018-05-10 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr. Richard Connor shares his more than 30 years of observations on an amazing population of dolphins in Shark Bay, Western Australia, considered the most complex non-human society known. In over 80 'story sections' he reveals the dolphins amazing social lives and "political alliances."
Download or read book The Dolphins of Shark Bay written by Pamela S. Turner and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2013 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We go with marine biologist, Janet Mann, to Australia to follow dolphins in the wild so we can figure out what makes dolphins intelligent.
Download or read book Cetacean Societies written by Janet Mann and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2000-06 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Part review, part testament to extraordinary dedication, and part call to get involved, Cetacean Societies highlights the achievements of behavioral ecologists inspired by the challenges of cetaceans and committed to the exploration of a new world."—from the preface by Richard Wrangham Long-lived, slow to reproduce, and often hidden beneath the water's surface, whales and dolphins (cetaceans) have remained elusive subjects for scientific study even though they have fascinated humans for centuries. Until recently, much of what we knew about cetaceans came from commercial sources such as whalers and trainers for dolphin acts. Innovative research methods and persistent efforts, however, have begun to penetrate the depths to reveal tantalizing glimpses of the lives of these mammals in their natural habitats. Cetacean Societies presents the first comprehensive synthesis and review of these new studies. Groups of chapters focus on the history of cetacean behavioral research and methodology; state-of-the-art reviews of information on four of the most-studied species: bottlenose dolphins, killer whales, sperm whales, and humpback whales; and summaries of major topics, including group living, male and female reproductive strategies, communication, and conservation drawn from comparative research on a wide range of species. Written by some of the world's leading cetacean scientists, this landmark volume will benefit not just students of cetology but also researchers in other areas of behavioral and conservation ecology as well as anyone with a serious interest in the world of whales and dolphins. Contributors are Robin Baird, Phillip Clapham, Jenny Christal, Richard Connor, Janet Mann, Andrew Read, Randall Reeves, Amy Samuels, Peter Tyack, Linda Weilgart, Hal Whitehead, Randall S. Wells, and Richard Wrangham.
Download or read book To Touch a Wild Dolphin written by Rachel Smolker and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2011-05-18 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To Touch a Wild Dolphin is the first intimate account of dolphin life in the wild. In 1982 Rachel Smolker traveled to Monkey Mia, a remote beach on the west coast of Australia where wild dolphins regularly interact with humans. Over the next fifteen years, Smolker and a team of fellow scientists were able to explore the lives of dolphins as they had never been explored before: up close, in their natural environment, with a definite recognition of individual dolphin identities. Smolker came to know the relationships, histories, and "personalities" of the dolphins. In To Touch a Wild Dolphin she offers delightful portraits of dolphins she became close to, ranging from the playful and incredibly silly to the slightly crazy, moody, and unpredictable. This develops into an examination of dolphin society and the diversity of characters that inhabit it. And ultimately from the intriguing, sometimes violent differences between the sexes to the nature of mother-infant relationships, to the wide repertoire of sounds used for social communication Smolker is able to reveal the inner workings of dolphin life with unprecedented clarity. Smolker was initially attracted to dolphins for the reasons that attract so many people to them: an elusive sense of their intelligence and their social and emotional complexity, a sense that despite the fact that we live in such entirely different worlds, dolphins are somehow like us. Now, after years of fascinating, inspiring, sometimes troubling, and occasionally heartbreaking experiences with the dolphins of Monkey Mia, Smolker is able to unravel many of the mysteries surrounding these beloved animals. To Touch a Wild Dolphin is a personal book in many ways, at the level of the dolphins and also at the level of the scientist. It is an important book, one that greatly enhances our understanding of dolphins and of ourselves, and as such it will take its place alongside such classics as Farley Mowat's Never Cry Wolf and Jane Goodall's In the Shadow of Man.
Download or read book The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins written by Hal Whitehead and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on their own research as well as scientific literature including evolutionary biology, animal behavior, ecology, anthropology, psychology and neuroscience, two cetacean biologists submerge themselves in the unique environment in which whales and dolphins live. --Publisher's description.
Download or read book The Bottlenose Dolphin written by John E. Reynolds, III and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bottlenose Dolphin presents for the first time a comprehensive, colorfully illustrated, and concise overview of a species that has fascinated humans for at least 3,000 years. After reviewing historical myths and legends of the dolphin back to the ancient Greeks and discussing current human attitudes and interactions, the author replaces myths with facts--up-to-date scientific assessment of dolphin evolution, behavior, ecology, morphology, reproduction, and genetics--while also tackling the difficult issues of dolphin conservation and management. Although comprehensive enough to be of great value to professionals, educators, and students, the book is written in a manner that all dolphin lovers will enjoy. Randall Wells’s anecdotes interspersed throughout the work offer a first-hand view of dolphin encounters and research based on three decades working with them. Color photographs and nearly 100 black and white illustrations, including many by National Geographic photographer Flip Nicklin, beautifully enhance the text.
Download or read book Marine Mammals Fisheries Tourism and Management Issues written by Nicholas Gales and published by CSIRO PUBLISHING. This book was released on 2003-10-22 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marine Mammals: Fisheries, Tourism and Management Issues brings together contributions from 68 leading scientists from 12 countries to provide a comprehensive, up-to-date review on the way we manage our interactions with whales, dolphins, seals and dugongs. The book examines how we have fared conserving the world’s marine mammal populations, with a focus on the key issues of fisheries and tourism. From a unique southern hemisphere perspective, the authors consider how science informs the culling debate, how wild fisheries and aquaculture interact with marine mammal populations and how we might manage the effects of whale, dolphin and seal watching industries. The authors also address other issues such as the way in which ethics, genetics, acoustics, ecosystem models and pollution influence the management and conservation of marine mammals. Marine Mammals is an invaluable and accessible resource for all those involved with marine mammals, including scientists, managers, policy makers, industry representatives and students. Winner of a 2004 Whitley Award.
Download or read book Ethology and Behavioral Ecology of Odontocetes written by Bernd Würsig and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-08-02 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book concentrates on the marine mammalian group of Odontocetes, the toothed whales, dolphins, and porpoises. In 23 chapters, a total of 40 authors describe general patterns of ethological concepts of odontocetes in their natural environments, with a strong bent towards behavioral ecology. Examples are given of particularly well-studied species and species groups for which enough data exist, especially from the past 15 years. The aim is to give a modern flavor of present knowledge of ethology and behavior of generally large-brained behaviorally flexible mammals that have evolved quite separately from social mammals on land. As well, the plight of populations and species due to humans is described in multiple chapters, with the goal that an understanding of behavior can help to solve or alleviate at least some human-made problems.
Download or read book Deep Thinkers written by Janet Mann and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-02-14 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A remarkable look at dolphin and whale intelligence, communication, and culture, with stunning photographs: “A wonderful read.” —Biologist Dolphins, whales, and porpoises are often considered to be the smartest nonhuman creatures on Earth. Science and nature buffs are drawn to stories of their use of tools, their self-recognition, their beautiful and complex songs, and their intricate societies. But how do we know what we know, and what does it mean? In Deep Thinkers, renowned cetacean biologist Janet Mann gathers a gam of the world’s leading whale and dolphin researchers—including Luke Rendell, Hal Whitehead, and many more—to illuminate these vital questions, exploring the astounding capacities of cetacean brains. Diving into our current understanding of and dynamic research on dolphin and whale cognition, communication, and culture, Deep Thinkers reveals how incredibly sophisticated these mammals are—and how much we can learn about other animal minds by studying cetacean behavior. Through a combination of fascinating text and more than 150 beautiful and informative illustrations, chapters compare the intelligence markers of cetaceans with those of birds, bats, and primates, asking how we might properly define intelligence in nonhumans. As all-encompassing and profound as the seas in which these deep cetacean cultures have evolved, Deep Thinkers is an awesome and inspiring journey into the fathoms—a reminder of what we gain through their close study, and of what we lose when the great minds of the sea disappear. “Everything you always wanted to know about cetaceans and their intelligence captured here in a single beautiful volume by some of the world’s greatest experts.” —Frans de Waal, New York Times–bestselling author of Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? “Teeming with cool stuff.” —NPR’s 13.7: Cosmos & Culture
Download or read book Island of the Blue Dolphins written by Scott O'Dell and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1960 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Far off the coast of California looms a harsh rock known as the island of San Nicholas. Dolphins flash in the blue waters around it, sea otter play in the vast kep beds, and sea elephants loll on the stony beaches. Here, in the early 1800s, according to history, an Indian girl spent eighteen years alone, and this beautifully written novel is her story. It is a romantic adventure filled with drama and heartache, for not only was mere subsistence on so desolate a spot a near miracle, but Karana had to contend with the ferocious pack of wild dogs that had killed her younger brother, constantly guard against the Aleutian sea otter hunters, and maintain a precarious food supply. More than this, it is an adventure of the spirit that will haunt the reader long after the book has been put down. Karana's quiet courage, her Indian self-reliance and acceptance of fate, transform what to many would have been a devastating ordeal into an uplifting experience. From loneliness and terror come strength and serenity in this Newbery Medal-winning classic.
Download or read book Methuselah s Zoo written by Steven N. Austad and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-08-15 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stories of long-lived animal species—from thousand-year-old tubeworms to 400-year-old sharks—and what they might teach us about human health and longevity. Opossums in the wild don’t make it to the age of three; our pet cats can live for a decade and a half; cicadas live for seventeen years (spending most of them underground). Whales, however, can live for two centuries and tubeworms for several millennia. Meanwhile, human life expectancy tops out around the mid-eighties, with some outliers living past 100 or even 110. Is there anything humans can learn from the exceptional longevity of some animals in the wild? In Methusaleh’s Zoo, Steven Austad tells the stories of some extraordinary animals, considering why, for example, animal species that fly live longer than earthbound species and why animals found in the ocean live longest of all. Austad—the leading authority on longevity in animals—argues that the best way we will learn from these long-lived animals is by studying them in the wild. Accordingly, he proceeds habitat by habitat, examining animals that spend most of their lives in the air, comparing insects, birds, and bats; animals that live on, and under, the ground—from mole rats to elephants; and animals that live in the sea, including quahogs, carp, and dolphins. Humans have dramatically increased their lifespan with only a limited increase in healthspan; we’re more and more prone to diseases as we grow older. By contrast, these species have successfully avoided both environmental hazards and the depredations of aging. Can we be more like them?
Download or read book The Well Connected Animal written by Lee Alan Dugatkin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2024-05-16 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engaging exploration of the wondrous social webs that permeate life in animal societies around the world. It’s all about who you know. Whether vampire bats sharing blood meals for survival, field crickets remembering champion fighters, macaque monkeys forming grooming pacts after a deadly hurricane, or great tit birds learning the best way to steal milk—it pays to be well connected. In this tour of the animal kingdom, evolutionary biologist Lee Alan Dugatkin reveals a new field of study, uncovering social networks that existed long before the dawn of human social media. He accessibly describes the latest findings from animal behavior, evolution, computer science, psychology, anthropology, genetics, and neurobiology, and incorporates interviews and insights from researchers he finds swimming with manta rays, avoiding pigeon poop, and stopping monkeys from stealing iPads. With Dugatkin as our guide, we investigate social networks in giraffes, elephants, kangaroos, Tasmanian devils, whales, bats, and more. From animal networks in Australia and Asia to Africa, Europe, and the Americas, The Well-Connected Animal is an eye-opening exposé of wild friends, enemies, and everything in between.
Download or read book Beautiful Minds written by Maddalena Bearzi and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-01 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Apes and dolphins: primates and cetaceans. Could any creatures appear to be more different? Yet both are large-brained intelligent mammals with complex communication and social interaction. In the first book to study apes and dolphins side by side, Maddalena Bearzi and Craig B. Stanford, a dolphin biologist and a primatologist who have spent their careers studying these animals in the wild, combine their insights with compelling results. Beautiful Minds explains how and why apes and dolphins are so distantly related yet so cognitively alike and what this teaches us about another large-brained mammal: Homo sapiens. Noting that apes and dolphins have had no common ancestor in nearly 100 million years, Bearzi and Stanford describe the parallel evolution that gave rise to their intelligence. And they closely observe that intelligence in action, in the territorial grassland and rainforest communities of chimpanzees and other apes, and in groups of dolphins moving freely through open coastal waters. The authors detail their subjects’ ability to develop family bonds, form alliances, and care for their young. They offer an understanding of their culture, politics, social structure, personality, and capacity for emotion. The resulting dual portrait—with striking overlaps in behavior—is key to understanding the nature of “beautiful minds.”
Download or read book Animal Wise written by Virginia Morell and published by Crown Publishing Group (NY). This book was released on 2013 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the frontiers of research on animal cognition and emotion, offering a surprising examination into the hearts and minds of wild and domesticated animals.
Download or read book The Geology of Shark Bay written by Phillip Elliott Playford and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Animals of Shark Bay written by and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Voices in the Ocean written by Susan Casey and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2015-08-04 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Susan Casey, the New York Times bestselling author of The Wave and The Devil’s Teeth, a breathtaking journey through the extraordinary world of dolphins Since the dawn of recorded history, humans have felt a kinship with the sleek and beautiful dolphin, an animal whose playfulness, sociability, and intelligence seem like an aquatic mirror of mankind. In recent decades, we have learned that dolphins recognize themselves in reflections, count, grieve, adorn themselves, feel despondent, rescue one another (and humans), deduce, infer, seduce, form cliques, throw tantrums, and call themselves by name. Scientists still don’t completely understand their incredibly sophisticated navigation and communication abilities, or their immensely complicated brains. While swimming off the coast of Maui, Susan Casey was surrounded by a pod of spinner dolphins. It was a profoundly transporting experience, and it inspired her to embark on a two-year global adventure to explore the nature of these remarkable beings and their complex relationship to humanity. Casey examines the career of the controversial John Lilly, the pioneer of modern dolphin studies whose work eventually led him down some very strange paths. She visits a community in Hawaii whose adherents believe dolphins are the key to spiritual enlightenment, travels to Ireland, where a dolphin named as “the world’s most loyal animal” has delighted tourists and locals for decades with his friendly antics, and consults with the world’s leading marine researchers, whose sense of wonder inspired by the dolphins they study increases the more they discover. Yet there is a dark side to our relationship with dolphins. They are the stars of a global multibillion-dollar captivity industry, whose money has fueled a sinister and lucrative trade in which dolphins are captured violently, then shipped and kept in brutal conditions. Casey’s investigation into this cruel underground takes her to the harrowing epicenter of the trade in the Solomon Islands, and to the Japanese town of Taiji, made famous by the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove, where she chronicles the annual slaughter and sale of dolphins in its narrow bay. Casey ends her narrative on the island of Crete, where millennia-old frescoes and artwork document the great Minoan civilization, a culture which lived in harmony with dolphins, and whose example shows the way to a more enlightened coexistence with the natural world. No writer is better positioned to portray these magical creatures than Susan Casey, whose combination of personal reporting, intense scientific research, and evocative prose made The Wave and The Devil’s Teeth contemporary classics of writing about the sea. In Voices in the Ocean, she has written a thrilling book about the other intelligent life on the planet.
