Dolphin Societies: Discoveries and Puzzles

by Karen Pryor

Wild dolphins are an elusive subject for behavioral How can you "do a Jane Goodall" on animals usually visible only as a glimpse of rolling dorsal fins heading for the horizon? In this unusual book, two of the best-known scientists in the marine-mammal field have assembled an astonishing variety of discoveries about dolphins. The contributions range from a graduate student's first paper to senior scientists summarizing a lifetime of research. The dolphins they have studied range from tiny spinners to majestic pilot whales, from killer whales to the familiar bottle-nosed dolphin. The research tactics vary just as the researchers have followed dolphins in boats, tracked them from shore, dived among hundreds of them (plus a few sharks) in tuna fishing nets. They have used computers and airplanes, genetic analysis and artificial language, and learned to read the life history of a dolphin from the cross-section of a single tooth.

Pryor and Norris are successful writers as well as scientists; the book is peppered with entertaining essays, by one or both editors, on the intriguing history of dolphin research. Dolphin Societies not only surveys the most interesting recent research on dolphin behavior but also gives lay readers a fascinating look at the scientific mind at work.

Genres: Science, Animals, Nonfiction

406 pages, Paperback

First published May 19, 1991

About the author

Karen Pryor was an American author who specialized in behavioral psychology and marine mammal biology. She was the founder and proponent of clicker training. She was formerly a Marine Mammal Commissioner to the U.S. government.

Reviews

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Readers who would like to learn about dolphin research and about dolphins in general may find this book useful, although dry reading. I was more interested in learning about an intelligent animal which lives in groups and the associated social organization and behavior. There was not as much about that. If you read Franz de Waal's books on chimps, you'll learn about dominance hierarchies and behaviors, sharing, cooperation on projects, etc. You'll find bits and pieces of such material in this book, but there are significant parts of the book which are not even "interpersonal behavior" to say nothing of "societies". Clearly, there are considerable obstacles to learning about dolphins which are not as difficult in researching chimps. Dolphins live in the sea, use "sonar" echo-location, emit / hear sounds far beyond the ability of humans, etc. A certain amount can be learned from dolphins in captivity. However, there is no guarantee captive behavior is identical to wild behavior. That is all the more true if one considers dolphin schools can have as many as 1000 members. It would be hard to maintain a captive enclosure which had the environmental qualities of the wild and room for an entire school of dolphins. The end result is our knowledge is disappointingly limited.

One area of concern I had about the book was the fact that the articles in it dealt with a number of species - in more than one genus - of cetaceans. (Some which you may not have thought of as dolphins.) If one wishes to understand chimpanzees and/or bonobos (which differ in various ways), a book which jumped back and forth in discussing the two species could leave readers mixed up about which species had which characteristics. (There are rare instances in this book which indicate there are social variation between dolphin species, but little delineation of specifics.) The book doesn't make an effort or organize the material in sections based on individual species or groups of species with similar social attributes. At best, a reader may need to carefully keep track of which statements are being said about which species.

[Michelle LaPointe · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is very dry and fairly old. It's entirely scientific articles, with the exception of a couple of essays by the editors. It's probably something you should read if you are as obsessed with dolphins as I am, but it's not as fun as Karen Pryor's other books.