The Well-Connected Animal

Although our common use of the term "social network" to cover things like Facebook puts these interactions in too small a box, this survey of the current state of social communication in groups of animals is full of surprises. It's an excellently written popular account.

I read this book thanks to the publisher and NetGalley. As usual, the offer didn't disappoint me.

This book delighted the never materialized little scientist in me, because I was always passionate about animals, animal welfare and research, but rarely did those books manage to make me feel that passion behind the scenes of the research projects those scientists were conducting.

Every being (humans included) connects over food, reproduction, power, safety, travel, communication, culture and health, no matter how diminutive these networks may seem to our eyes. Networks are not present only between individuals, but also between groups and different species, not to mention even peculiar specimens inside one single individual.

After discussing the very idea of the network itself, every type is dissected in their own chapter. Each chapter painstakingly covers three or more dissertations made by author's fellow scientists, including their fascinating stories behind the scenes of each.
I was surprised to discover there are so many animals being analyzed that I did not pay very much attention to - from guppies to manta rays, sifakas and macaques, to hyraxes and tasmanian devils, to bats, cockatoos, bees and... microbes.

Personally I found the most interesting aspect of those projects were sometimes cataclysmic events that were in no way created by scientists, but happened quite accidentally. Those disasters such as hurricanes, droughts, unexpected apocalyptic-like predator attacks threatened to completely derail the experiments, but eventually proved to be oddly beneficial to the projects, because they unwittingly showcased what scientists also needed: how networks function under - mildly put - adverse conditions and how dynamics changed afterwards for the survival and the betterment of the whole group and the individuals.

I do envy those scientists. I would have loved to work with a massive amount of data and to try to make sense of it all. However, I would have had a very difficult time not to get attached to the subjects of those experiments, as many of them did. Good thing though was that after such a sorrow, they felt a bit of relief that in many cases life did find a way, and with those experiments they showed just how. Some might say the conclusions were obvious - humans are also beings who rely on networking in any sense mentioned above. However, it took a generation or two of scientists, and a book or two just like this one I've just read, to accept that such assumptions may be applied to animals of lower ranking than humans, and that we all are not so fundamentally different as we like to think.

One of the best things about technology is how it has allowed us to learn more about non-human animals. As cool as it would be to imagine that this book is about house finches tweeting, the content is even more mind-blowing. The advent of social media got scientists thinking about the science of social networks and very soon ethologists joined the effort. This is what happens when you apply a new area to old data: you find out how animals, from giraffes to manta rays, have friends, acquaintances and even frenemies. Much of the research here was done way before Facebook even existed, but only social network analysis put it in context. The author has an approachable, colloquial style that makes the text easy to understand. At no point was I lost in the data, everything made perfect sense. It is also encouraging that this field is full of young scientists making their mark. You can even read about the birth of a cultural trend in chimpanzees live - right here as it happened. I can’t say enough good things about this amazing volume. Catnip for animal lovers.
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, #NetGalley/#University of Chicago Press.

In a world so obsessed with social media, it's a real breath of fresh air to read about the social connections of animals and how they have always communicated and connected with each other.

A well written book, that isn't too science heavy, so is easy to understand, definitely worth a read

Thank you for this ARC NetGalley and the publishers