Book Review: Naturekind

 

Image: the cover of the book is a navy blue background with an illustration of a maze of green leaves that morph into silhouette of various animal species. Humans, bats, bees, horses, fish. Across the top in white is Melissa Leach and James Fairhead. Across the bottom in white is Naturekind: language, culture, and power beyond the human.

Naturekind is an interesting book wherein Melissa Leach and James Fairhead take an approach to the idea of language and communication that I haven't quite read about before. BioSemiotics is not a field I'm super familiar with, so I enjoyed learning more about it. Going in, I expected this book to be another discussion of how other animals have language and communication that is complex in a myriad of ways much like our own. The authors take a much wider ranging approach. While I do have some criticisms, overall I found the book to be rather enlightening in ways that I think a variety of audiences can learn from. The authors not only discuss communication with and between other animals, but also stretch it out to plants, forests, soils, and cities. 

Those of us who have read a lot about these things may bristle at this idea, wondering if it is going to be a misrepresentation of something in order to demean the expression or care for other animals (such as when disingenuous people claim "plants scream and feel pain!" in order to avoid discussion of harm and exploitation of farmed animals.) I'm happy to tell you that that is not what the authors are doing. They argue language and communication are more diverse and comprehensive. There are human languages and communications, that of other animals, and that between humans and other animals that are relatable to readers for obvious reasons. However they expand the idea to call attention to the interweaving of everyone and everything in each environment. There is no need to anthropomorphize plants and places in order to discuss interwoven communication and approach an important understanding of interconnectedness between everyone.

This another book I am reading yet again as a non-academic person in this particular field. That said, I found their book to be fairly readable and accessible. It is jargony but in a way that requires more time and attention, rather than a way that makes it impossible for the layman to read. The book also references many others I have read about animal language and communication which I was pleased to see. The review of the literature in general is pretty wide and impressive.

One of the best parts about this book is a tenet woven throughout every chapter: the importance of seeing individuals rather than species solely as homogenous groups. While appreciation for and understanding of species as a whole is important, humans often lose sight of the individual which can lead to significant problems both in study and in the capacity to do harm. The authors note that there is not a single human language nor style of communication. Thus, we should approach others knowing that there will be individual, cultural, dialectical, etc differences within and across species.

The book also takes note of how power dynamics can affect communication, however I think they did not focus on this enough. Unfortunately, most in depth discussion of other animals (who received full chapters) were of domesticated species or others in captivity and focused specifically on humans' communication with them rather than their communications with one another. 

There was not enough discussion about how chickens, horses, bees, etc behave outside of exploitative (egg farming, horse riding,  breeding, and selling, honey production) environments. There is even a quick mention near the end of "respect" for chickens including the act of eating them when they're killed for not producing eggs enough anymore. The authors are including a perspective rather than stating this as personal belief, but I still found it frustrating that there was no discussion of the chicken's desire to exist even when she is no longer a site of capitalist gain. They discuss dressage- widely accepted as including cruel practices- as "mutually beneficial" for humans and horses. They also make the mistake of discussing colony collapse of bees while focusing on honey bees. This is one of the most successful misdirections of the honey industry. Native bees are the ones in danger and suffering collapse. Honey bees are a non native species introduced by honey producers that competes with native bees, possibly making colony collapse worse, while also being victims of it collaterally. Apiaries are also not magical sites of human and bee communication when they're inseminating queens and cutting off her wings so she can't leave in order to produce and sell honey. 

This repeated focus on humans' desires and communication seems to detract at times from what it seems the authors are trying to do with this book. I expected much more discussion of how other than human animals communicate with one another both within and across species. The focus on the human creates an anthropocentric through line in these stories which allows for the neglect in attention to the aforementioned exploitative relationships. I believe if the authors intended to focus most on domestic species that they should have visited sanctuaries rather than farms or discussed native bees if they were going to focus on colony collapse at all. 

I do like how the authors regularly discussed a variety of indigenous peoples relationships and practices with other animals. To see something on the scientific side be discussed in tandem with cultural practices including spirituality is an interesting exercise. They also discuss the problem with seeing indigenous people as part of nature separate from other people and the problems this creates. That said there is still a little bit of romanticism there likely born from wanting to show respect. Given that the book is focused on communication and language, I would for instance challenge the idea that animals "give their lives" to hunters as patently false. It only works as an argument if one completely ignores communication from other animals. There is no bear scene from Yellowjackets happening in this universe. Discussion of some people's need for subsistence hunting or their cultural existence in a web of ecology does not require anthropocentric misdirection away from what individual animals are desiring and experiencing. Overall though, I do think they navigated anthropological information and tandem with biosemiotics and ways that made a lot of sense.

When the book gets into communication via plants, forests, soils, immune systems, and even cities, I found myself pleasantly challenged in terms of how I think about these things. This is where my own anthropocentrism peeks through as my very human brain wants to analyze how these things are like humans. Thankfully, they often aren't and don't need to be. There is still a rich web of interconnected communication that is difficult to verbalize. These authors manage to create a vision where we can better understand how these things are connected and how information is transferred and shared. They helped me think about things as all part of a larger collective existence. I really enjoyed these parts of this book for that reason. I don't believe I've previously encountered this sort of discussion that was not disingenuous or anthropomorphic*. Rather than forcing nature into anthropocentric definitions of language and communication, the authors expand upon these ideas instead.

The conclusion does well to wrap up a variety of ideas expressed throughout the chapters focusing on each category of species or environment. There is a small discussion about why some will choose not to kill other animals when possible, but I would have liked to read a bit more about that given how much of their study was focused on sites power dynamics between humans and other animals. It seems possibly that the authors lean in that direction, and I believe they would have a lot to add to the discussion if they would have spent more time on it. I understand that this book is more of an exercise of describing things that exist rather than making an ethical argument of some sort. Yet, I still would have liked a little more balance in this area.

Even though I do have of criticisms about the discussions specifically of other animals, I am still rating this book highly. It adds to the conversation in ways I've never seen before. It left me thinking a lot about communication topics outside of animality in ways that reach throughout all of my own interactions with the wider world. It also helped me better understand biosemiotics in general as well as how these particular authors are expanding ideas therein.

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.

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*I do not use the term anthropomorphism to demean other species like many people do. What I mean is the direct application and insistence that someone else has human traits in ways that are not possible. An example would be when you see a barbecue sign with a dressed in a t-shirt serving up his own dead body on a plate or the claim that vegetables cry in pain as they are picked because they release biological communication elements. Anthropomorphism is NOT the idea that other animals have language and communication or have complex emotions and experiences even though some people like to pretend that that is what is in order to avoid acknowledging the oppression of other species.

Book Review: Return to the Sky

Image: the cover of the book is a light blue sky background with two adult bald eagles in the foreground. With white heads, brown bodies and a large yellow bill and talons. One bird is perched on a broken tree with their wings spread and another is flying downward about to land with them. In the upper right corner is "Tina Morris" below that "Foreword by Dr Elizabeth Gray, CEO, National Audubon Society." Below that in larger letters is "Return to the Sky." In the lower left corner is "the surprising story of how one woman and seven eaglets helped restore the bald eagle."
 

Return to the Sky was such a refreshing delight of a bird book and memoir. This review includes my usual diversions from the topic as is customary on any book involving animal research and conservation. Tina Morris' and these eagles' work and life are already interesting in their own light. The way this book is written makes it stand out as more than that. Even starting with the title byline, it is clear that this is not a book about one human saving birds. It is about the birds and this human saving themselves. Morris ponders regularly what the birds must go through, acknowledging the struggle and strength in each personality. Being a woman navigating the highly white male dominated science and conservation fields is of course a large part of Morris' history. Yet, still, even when media wanted to center her in the story in the past, she demanded that the birds be centered. Quite often, nature writing is rife with anthropocentrism and saviorism. It pains me to say as a birder that birding and bird conservation books can sometimes be even moreso than average. I often find myself baffled by how little some authors are able to understand or give credit to the birds they study and/or write about. Tina Morris has a way with story telling that is full of respect and compassion while also being concretely grounded in data and rationale. This mix is hard to come by, though it has gotten better with time- led by many women scientists and naturalists over decades and more. Morris quotes Jane Goodall at one point as a driving force involving the importance of respecting compassion as part of the sciences. This shows through Morris' actions and thoughts on the page. 

Another unfortunately common thing in bird conservation and science is for people to sacrifice their ethics bit by bit when encountering the indoctrination coming from fields and industries that involve captive animal research or exploitation for entertainment (such as zoos.) I can speak to these (attempts) at such in my own past education, even in human animal based research fields- questioning is shut down immediately and ethical concerns are addressed institutionally by a few (mostly) animal researchers in a room (IACUCs) who often do worse ethical things in their own labs. Zoos exist as entertainment businesses before anything else despite rebranding as conservation sites (most animals in zoos are not endangered, most animals will not breed while stressed by imprisonment and being gawked at all day, etc.) It can be a big no no to say anything negative about zoos or captive bred animal labs without being immediately met with defensiveness, clever marketing, industry propaganda, and accusations of emotionality and compassion (as negatives,) and so on.

Morris never falls into this trap. She is open minded and excited by each endeavor into working with other animals that she attempts in early life, not entering expecting to find suffering, but refusing to look away when she does. She does not sacrifice ethics when she is confronted with harm to other animals. We learn about her initial education experiences involving a (captive) animal laboratory and then a zoo and I found myself waiting for the disappointment to hit- when the author gives in and wills themself out of the accurate assessment of harm that they have witnessed in order to fall in line with the propaganda of these industries. Morris' strength of character and ability to take objective stock of what she is seeing allow her to avoid this multiple times. She speaks honestly about suffering that she has witnessed and how each attempt at finding ways to work with other animals would fail when realizing the callousness it would require of her. She even gives zoos another shot later, but finds the next place to be even worse than the last. She does not give up. Even when academic research and veterinary programs required (the now often phased out) harm toward other animals in order to progress, she would move on but continue to find ways to work in conservation and research with other animals. I cannot stress this issue enough: we lose countless brilliant compassionate minds to this. Morris is an exception. There are many others who walk away from their education due to refusal to enact or condone suffering of other animals and never look back. 

Morris' tenacity and brilliance ends up landing her in the wilderness alone raising eaglets of an endangered species with the help of others along the way. She has to overcome pretty insidious fears of heights among other things throughout her journey. She discusses her many trials, tribulations, wonders, and successes all while keeping the eagles at the center of the story. Morris also discusses the grey areas of such work- necessary evils one might say. "Hacking" involves taking eaglets from their parents and transporting them to another location to try to bring the species back from near extinction, with no consent of the parents or chicks. At this time, it was not known if it would even work. The conservation process also involves regularly interrupting their lives for various research metrics and robbing them of a life raised by other eagles. It ended up being wildly successful for this species. Bald eagles were previously heavily hunted and along with DDT poisoning barely stood a chance. Regulations could only do so much to stop their decline. The feeding of the eagles was also interesting- Morris had to fish carp from a local area. Being an introduced species, humans had caused the carp to cause imbalance in the area and thus the eagles became part of the balance. Yet, Morris being Morris, she did not love killing fish constantly. It is frustrating to say that this is one of the rare times I have seen these struggles discussed in this sort of book. The reality that we must be clear about what we are doing causes defensiveness, perhaps due to black and white thinking, some people seeing other animals a homogenized subjects of a whole rather than individuals, or due to cognitive dissonance. We should be thinking about what these birds and other animals are experiencing every single step of the way.

The best researchers are those who can balance honesty and compassion with scientific rigor. Endangered species have a tiny bit more protection in research processes, but most other bird research isn't even covered by the animal welfare act as they are captive bred birds. Wild birds were only given meager protections in the past couple of years- long after Morris was working with eagles. She also discusses the need for detachment and objectivity. One comes to feel like a parent to the birds while raising them, but it is important that they stay as wild as possible and do not grow up seeing humans as a source of safety and food. I am glad that Morris was the person who was involved with the intimate nature of the work. 

Morris wraps up the book with important lessons about the dire situation we are in across the planet. She calls for attention to conservation of not only charismatic species like the bald eagle, but of all other species that may not capture the publics hearts and attention the same way. She also calls for a lead ammo ban. Lead poisoning is causing literal extinctions and interrupting hard conservation work like this every day while hunting and gun lobbies fight against said bans. This is why hunting being rebranded as "conservation" is so offensive when then hunting was part of what drove the extinction and the attachment to lead ammo continues to do so. Regulation is where the conservation is and unfortunately lead ammo and sinkers in fishing abound. (For the record, Morris is not anti-hunting. She is merely urging- as many other actual conservationists have- that lead ammo be banned before hunting wipes even more birds off the planet.) 

When I looked at the goodreads page for this book, I was dismayed that it did not have more attention. It is a beautiful, motivating story. It is very well written and captivating. It is written by someone who seems to be a stellar human being in standout ways. It tells the story of a species that was almost gone forever, who I now see regularly soaring along the water through my binoculars. I hope more people will pick this book up whether you are interested in conservation, research, women in the sciences, birding, natural history, or just love a good memoir.

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.