By Rachel Smolker
To contact a Wild Dolphin is the 1st intimate account of dolphin lifestyles within the wild. In 1982 Rachel Smolker traveled to Monkey Mia, a distant seashore at the west coast of Australia the place wild dolphins on a regular basis engage with people. Over the following fifteen years, Smolker and a group of fellow scientists have been in a position to discover the lives of dolphins as that they had by no means been explored sooner than: up shut, of their normal atmosphere, with a distinct attractiveness of person dolphin identities.
Smolker got here to understand the relationships, histories, and "personalities" of the dolphins. In To contact a Wild Dolphin she deals pleasant pictures of dolphins she turned just about, starting from the playful and quite foolish to the marginally loopy, moody, and unpredictable. This develops into an exam of dolphin society and the range of characters that inhabit it. And finally from the exciting, occasionally violent transformations among the sexes to the character of mother-infant relationships, to the extensive repertoire of sounds used for social verbal exchange Smolker is ready to demonstrate the interior workings of dolphin existence with unparalleled clarity.
Smolker used to be at the beginning drawn to dolphins for the explanations that allure such a lot of humans to them: an elusive experience in their intelligence and their social and emotional complexity, a feeling that although we are living in such completely varied worlds, dolphins are in some way like us. Now, after years of interesting, inspiring, occasionally troubling, and infrequently heartbreaking reviews with the dolphins of Monkey Mia, Smolker is ready to resolve a number of the mysteries surrounding those cherished animals.
To contact a Wild Dolphin is a private booklet in lots of methods, on the point of the dolphins and in addition on the point of the scientist. it's a tremendous booklet, one who significantly complements our knowing of dolphins and of ourselves, and as such it's going to take its position along such classics as Farley Mowat's Never Cry Wolf and Jane Goodall's In the Shadow of Man.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Additional info for To Touch a Wild Dolphin: A Journey of Discovery with the Sea's Most Intelligent Creatures
Example text
Even the effect of this rhythm-destroying movement is astonishing. For a moment the seat of the swing hung motionless in the air almost a whole metre below the culmination point before swinging downwards once more. In the same instant the child returned to the seat and allowed the swing to move without influencing it further, until with shorter and shorter swings, alternately to the right and then to the left,25 it eventually came to rest. The child gave the impression that she had come back to Earth from another world.
As a four-year old, I wanted to have a close look at this migration of souls and in the process fell into the ice-cold water. The maidservant fished me out and administered stout blows, and in doing so she shook the water out of my lungs and stomach. She then took me into the kitchen and angrily sat me down on the kitchen sideboard, where my shocked mother took over. While my clothes were being changed, she delivered an unforgettable lecture. "You silly boy! How dare you go to the water! The poor souls of the departed migrate through the water towards the mountains and are resurrected at the springs and carried up to Heaven by the ur-force of all life.
The only solution, I thought to myself, was to observe the predator and its victims very carefully. A steep outcrop of rock on top of which there was a tall spruce tree provided an ideal vantage point. Equipped with a good spyglass and well concealed by upper foliage, I sat in the top of this tree alternately watching the eagle and the salmon swimming in the hole, which lay at an angle below me. I was careful not to make the slightest movement. Punctual almost to the minute, the mighty fish-eagle made its appearance and flew over the salmon holes just above the water, emitting a shrill cry and flapping its wings particularly vigorously.