PASSENGERS taking the train through Port Elizabeth in South Africa in the 1880s – today called Gqeberha – had more than the passing brushland to look at as they crossed the country and stared out of the window. As the train reached a certain signal box, they might have noticed that their safe passage was ensured not by a human, but by a chacma baboon.
Jack, as the baboon was called, was directed to switch the levers affecting the track’s configuration by his human companion and keeper, James Edwin Wide. Wide was nicknamed “Jumper” due to his proclivity for leaping between railway cars – a habit that lasted until it went wrong and he lost both his lower legs. Jack helped Wide carry on his work, and they communicated with each other through a series of signals.
The story of the baboon signaller is told in a book called How to Speak Whale, though it acts as an adjunct to the main narrative, which is author Tom Mustill’s attempt to dig for understanding beneath the burbling of cetaceans, the animals that are believed to be most like our own chatty selves.
Mustill’s book is a hugely engaging personal story of a journey into the future ofhuman-animal communication, facilitated by delving into its past. Throughout, the reader is thrown headlong into anecdotes, intimate conversations and detective-like inner monologues as the author tries to unpick the extent to which conversations are happening in the animal kingdom without humans recognising them.
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“Headlong” is the perfect description: Mustill, a wildlife film-maker, chooses to open his narrative with the story of how he became a viral internet sensation in 2015, after he was almost killed by a humpback whale breaching near his kayak. It is a scene that sets up the rest of the book, which rattles along at a pace that keeps the reader engaged.
A similar title, The Sounds of Life, takes a different tack, but is no less interesting. Karen Bakker, a professor at the University of British Columbia, Canada, who works at the intersection of environmental and economic geography, doesn’t limit her investigation to organisms or environments you might think of immediately. She also devotes time to plants and coral reefs, the latter of which she memorably equates to “an underwater orchestra or the endless improvisation of a jazz band”.
Though the books cover similar ground and, in some cases, the same pivotal moments in the history of animal conversation, their styles couldn’t be more different. Bakker ladles academic research liberally onto the reader in short, spare sentences that build up to a comprehensive whole. Her deep knowledge is worn lightly throughout the book, so that you never feel overwhelmed. Mustill’s style is more conversational, lingering on the made-for-Hollywood moments and delving deeper into the emotions and thoughts of the story’s protagonists.
While How to Speak Whale professes to focus on whales and their ilk, Mustill makes plenty of detours into other species, at one point telling the story of Alex the African grey parrot, whose name was derived from “avian language experiment”. Alex, who lived with comparative psychologist Irene Pepperberg from 1976 to 2007, had similar comprehension and language skills to a 5-year-old child. Despite such asides, both works are bookended with stories of whales and their uncanny ability to communicate, which makes us think more highly of their intelligence than that of almost any other animal.
Bakker and Mustill each unpick how intrinsic communication is thought to be to whales – and highlight that, as much as we profess to know about whale song and its purpose, there is still plenty to learn about how these beasts communicate. The authors also highlight how whales sense with sonar, and explain how science has harnessed military-grade microphones and sonar systems to track the underwater conversations that go on while we humans remain oblivious.
These portions of the books are chock-full of colourful characters that could only exist in this world, where researchers are driven by an insatiable need to understand the clicks and hums of entirely different species.
I had expected the two titles to be easily distinguishable: one about whales, the other covering the animal kingdom and beyond. One work seemed at first to be tightly focused around a narrower argument, while I expected the other to be more expansive and less detailed. One seemed to be an archetypal popular science book, while the other – by dint of its extensive references – appeared to be aimed at a more specialist reader.
I thought, therefore, that it would be easy to recommend one over the other, depending on the reader’s background, interests and hopes for the book. If you wanted a quick, easy read for a trip, you would pick Mustill’s. If you wanted something drier, but more worthy, you would pick Bakker’s.
But it isn’t such an easy choice. Both authors have confounded my expectations: How to Speak Whale is far more detailed and rigorous than you might at first imagine; while The Sounds of Life is eminently more readable than you might expect. They should be read together if you want to understand the full marvel of what we know about the ways life communicates on Earth, and to appreciate the many things we have yet to discover.
