Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace

There is so much fascinating information in this book. Reading Carl Sagin's books is like gleaning the information from great scientists PHD papers - but the information is so well written, so lively - it brings the hidden worlds and thinking of animals alive! I cannot praise this book highly enough - or Mr Safina's other books. The section on sperm whales is the best section I have ever read on whales (of multiple whale books I have read) where he pulls the curtain aside of these mysterious mammals and describes how those incredible animals think and behave - and I am amazed. Every section of the book is like this. The last chapter in the macaw section where Safina writes about beauty is incredibly thought provoking! I wish more people can master how to write natural history like Mr. Sagan because many people are doing fascinating research, but the information is not getting to easy to purchase and read books. I am wiser after reading this. Highly recommended easy reading for anyone interested in natural history or science!

As a primatologist who studies culture in chimpanzees, this eloquent, informative and beautifully-written book has allowed me to branch out and explore complex behaviors in other creatures living in what to us humans are otherworldly environments. Safina has a gift of putting you into the skin of our fellow culture-bearing beings, even when they live very different kinds of lives from our own. After reading the first chapters, I felt like I myself had just been searching for squid in the company of sonar-clicking sperm whales in the inkiest depths of the ocean! No fear for 'panthropologists', though, chimpanzees also make a delightful appearance! Safina manages to convey the immense complexity and richness of the lives of our fellow beings without falling into the temptation of humanizing them. This is a must-read for students of non-human behavioral diversity!

This is an arrestingly beautiful book, both for its boldness and its clarity of mind. It's an inquiry that takes you to new places in the assumptions one makes about other living creatures. Safina takes you on a fascinating journey, exploring the cultures of the wild animals who we share this planet with, their ways of being together and surviving together. We learn that so much of what we think of as our “humanity," the best of who we are—our care for loved ones, our sense of belonging—is something we share with wild animals who deserve our deepest regard. It’s an engrossing read, worthy of all the over-the-top superlatives we praise books with. If you read this book, the words family, beauty and belonging will have new meaning.

I expected there would be a larger variety of animals discussed, but the book did not disappoint.

In Becoming Wild, Carl Safina’s most recent foray into environmental journalism, the author eloquently guides us into appreciating the miraculous and complex lives of non-human beings. In Becoming Wild, he focuses on three species: sperm whales, Scarlet Macaws, chimpanzees, and their relatives and ecologically similar species. By meticulous background research and time in the animal’s habitat with the organisms’ foremost researchers, Safina gains priceless insight into the biology of the animals and the psyche of dedicated field workers. As a result, we become intimately familiar with both, accessing decades of fact, thought, opinion, and most importantly, passion for the animal. Certain themes recur in each section. First and foremost is the importance of culture in the lives of these animals, how social transmission of behavioral traditions across generations permeates their existence, including what and what not to eat; where to find it; how to capture, access, or process it; what songs to sing and vocalizations to use; where and when to migrate; whom to seek out and whom to avoid. Each section also focuses on a sub-theme. In sperm whales, it’s raising families. In macaws, it’s creating beauty, where Safina proposes the intriguing hypothesis that non-human beings evolve and appreciate beauty in much the same way our species seeks and appreciates the beautiful. In chimpanzees ¬– where cultural selection has produced such strong differences that we might recognize new species – it’s achieving peace and the constant physical and mental abuse male chimpanzees foist on competitors (and how female-dominated chimp societies tend to experience less combative mayhem). Underlying everything is the issue of declining populations and the vital need to conserve them through elimination of direct and indirect impacts: habitat loss, entanglement in nets, capture for the pet trade, and bush meat hunting and human-chimp conflict over land. Safina once again convinces us that by understanding complex social systems that parallel our own, we can empathize sufficiently to allow non-human beings to sustain the fascinating and rich lives they have evolved.

I have been a fan of Dr. Carl Safina's writing since his first book "Song For The Blue Ocean" and have read all of his works multiple times, and I can happily say this is one of his best. If you have read "Beyond Words", this could conceivably be thought of as a "sequel", as Dr. Safina continues with the idea of animals having intelligence and individual lives and extends that theme in this book with a discussion of how animals have a definite culture and conceptualization of each other in terms of teaching and recognition of beauty among themselves and the world around them. Like "Beyond Words", this book really altered my entire worldview in terms of how I relate and think about my fellow creatures on this Earth, causing me to have a deeper regard and respect for all living things and an even stronger conviction that they have a right to exist and thrive as much as myself or any other living thing does. A remarkable book, highly, highly recommended!

Fantastic book. I enjoy reading about animal behaviours and cultures, and this book provides lots of scientific insight into why animals are the way they are. I do find the author tends to wander around the subject, but he always ties it together. It reads like your reading someone's train of thought directly and organicly, but in a way that makes sense and leads you to new conclusions.

A must read book to understand better what culture really is and the paramount importance of Beauty for non humans and humans. Also fun to read.

Este livro, escrito por um especialista, estudioso das mentes e das culturas multiespecíficas, desmistifica dogmas religiosos e cientificos que recusam aos animais não humanos o ingresso no mundo dos direitos fundamentais, tidos como privilégio da espécie animal que sempre se põe de modo supremacista no mundo dos viventes terráqueos.

Carl Safina writes well and listens to his experts even better. A brilliant book about animal intelligence and communication