Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #151091 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 264 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780226616742
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Naturalist O'Connell's memoir of her 14 years researching the complexities of elephant behavior is a successful combination of science and soulfulness, explaining her groundbreaking theory of how elephants use seismic communication; she also sympathetically illuminates current social and ecological conditions in Africa. O'Connell's original goal in 1992 was to spend a year driving from South Africa to Kenya, but then she was hired for a three-year study of elephants in an area of northeastern Namibia, "where violent death is as much a part of the landscape as the capricious nature of rain." Fascinated by the "particular way that elephants seemed to be listening with their feet," she soon realized that the elephants were communicating with sound waves "that travel within the surface of the ground as opposed to the air." Her efforts over the next decade to prove this "unexpected and controversial" hypothesis took her "to the bayous of Texas, the Nevada desert, southern India, northern Zimbabwe, the Oakland Zoo, and then back to the scrub desert" of Namibia. Her account is studded with sympathetic insights and well-turned phrases, such as her delight when "100 tons of pachyderm pass by, almost tiptoeing, heads bobbing in their Groucho Marx gait." (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
The largest land animal is the African elephant, a creature so vast that it is impossible to ignore. And yet, what do we really know about elephants? Field biologist O'Connell was in Namibia working on nonlethal methods for deterring elephants from raiding local people's crops. One night she was observing a young elephant sneaking past her house and inadvertently dropped her book. The startled elephant ran off literally on her tiptoes. On another location, while observing elephants at a waterhole, the author saw the matriarch suddenly turn, flatten her ears, and lift one leg off the ground. Several other females then faced the same direction, and soon another elephant appeared. Could elephants feel vibrations through the ground, literally "listening" with their feet? In a riveting account of scientific discovery both in the field and in the laboratory, O'Connell tells of how she and her colleagues studied seismic communication in elephants. O'Connell's love for her research subjects and her quest for understanding them is integral to her story, making for an addictive narrative. Nancy Bent
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"Our author sleeps in blinds, pores through elephant dung, darts and collars elephant matriarchs, puts zoo elephants on force plates to send vibrations to their feet, even cuts up a frozen elephant to search for vibration-sensitive cells in its toes and heels. . . . A compelling memoir of how a small but fascinating biological discovery is made, from a momentary observation to a fully presented theory."-Anthony Doerr, Boston Globe (Anthony Doerr Boston Globe )

"I was transported by the author's superbly sensuous descriptions of her years spent studying the animals. . . . Conjure[s] a high-class nature documentary film in prose."-Steven Poole, Guardian (Steven Poole Guardian )

"A ride as rough and astonishing as the roads of the African floodplain."-Joan Keener, Entertainment Weekly (Joan Keener Entertainment Weekly )

"A successful combination of science and soulfulness, explaining her groundbreaking theory of how elephants use seismic communication. . . . [O'Connell's] account is studded with sympathetic insights and well-turned phrases."-Publishers Weekly (Publishers Weekly )

"This fascinating book reads like a fast-paced detective story of a scientific discovery and adventure set in contemporary Africa. . . . By the end, [O'Connell] takes her rightful place among the leading biographers of the African elephant."-Iain Douglas-Hamilton, author of Among the Elephants (Ian Douglas-Hamilton )

Customer Reviews

A Powerful Read
The Elephant's Secret Sense is a compelling journey of discovery, told with a clear and intimate voice that is rare in this genre of writing. Dropped into the middle of rural Africa straight out of graduate school, Caitlin O'Connell used her wits and the lessons learned from a tiny Hawaiian insect, to turn a difficult experience of keeping crop raiding elephants out of fields, into the discovery that elephants are communicating with seismic signals.

While this voyage of discovery, with its twists, turns and occasional brush with feisty lions kept me turning the pages, it was the inner layers of the book, about the complex and often difficult relationships between rural communities and elephants that gave the story its soul.

Caitlin O'Connell has spent thirteen long years working with elephants and it shows. Whether she was flying high above the free ranging elephant herds of southern Africa, or teaching a single female zoo elephant to communicate with her, she managed to share the unique sights, sounds and emotions of the moment that make a book like this so memorable.

Caitlin O'Connell finds that difficult balance between the scientific objectivity and compassion that is rare and much appreciated and I would encourage anyone with an interest in natural history and understanding our place in the world of animals to read this book.

An amazing journey...
I was very impressed with this book. Part of what Caitlin O'Connell experienced for long stretches of time is something the vast majority of us could not imagine. One particular chapter about the elephant Donna was a personal favorite, explaining in detail much of what this groundbreaking scientist (along with her husband Tim Rodwell) had to cope with in working with these gigantic subjects. Another chapter that detailed a African village experience was quite moving, especially as a dramatic event unfolded in a very unfamiliar, Third World setting. A must-read -- there are very few scientific, introspective books that have gone the necessary distance.

An astounding achievement and truly riveting story
I read this whole book from start to finish on a series of flights that I took recently and I was totally taken with the story and the science behind it. I couldn't put it down and I haven't read a book in 10yrs! From a phenomenal underlying technological journey merges the principles of many scientific disciplines ranging from zoology, biology, acoustics, geophysics, chemistry, mechanics, electronics, mathematics, not to mention anthropology.

As a physicist, I loved the explanation of acoustic coupling and aliasing, a very impressive bridge, making connections between fundamental processes that are essential in tying together a very complex phenomenon.

There were tragic elements to the story that were horrific and left me in tears, but at the same time, a remarkable account of caring and human bonding. Congratulations to the author. I can't wait for her next book!