The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants

by Karen Bakker Narrated by Suzanne Toren

Overview

This audiobook narrated by Suzanne Toren takes you on an amazing journey into the hidden realm of nature's sounds

The natural world teems with remarkable conversations, many beyond human hearing range. Scientists are using groundbreaking digital technologies to uncover these astonishing sounds, revealing vibrant communication among our fellow creatures across the Tree of Life.

At once meditative and scientific, The Sounds of Life shares fascinating and surprising stories of nonhuman sound, interweaving insights from technological innovation and traditional knowledge. We meet scientists using sound to protect and regenerate endangered species from the Great Barrier Reef to the Arctic and the Amazon. We discover the shocking impacts of noise pollution on both animals and plants. We learn how artificial intelligence can decode nonhuman sounds, and meet the researchers building dictionaries in East African Elephant and Sperm Whalish. At the frontiers of innovation, we explore digitally mediated dialogues with bats and honeybees. Technology often distracts us from nature, but what if it could reconnect us instead?

The Sounds of Life offers hope for environmental conservation and affirms humanity's relationship with nature in the digital age. After learning about the unsuspected wonders of nature's sounds, we will never see walks outdoors in the same way again.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

10/03/2022

Bakker (Water Teachings), director of the University of British Columbia’s Program on Water Governance, takes stock of the technology that’s being developed to help humans “listen to nonhumans in powerful ways.” Such innovations are “reviving our connection to the natural world,” Bakker writes: scientists have discovered that turtles use “an underwater communication system with a repertoire of complex sound”; are using algorithms to “talk to plants”; have discerned that fish make noises (one of the “first documented instances of fish noise” was thanks to a mic wrapped in a condom); and are developing “bee-imitating robots” that can communicate with honeybees. Bakker is optimistic that such technological developments will enhance “our ability to monitor organisms and ecosystems and detect environmental change,” and he maintains an inspiring perspective on what scientists are discovering in the face of humans’ limited sensory capacities: “Although these calls are some of the loudest ever recorded in the animal kingdom, they are inaudible to us,” the author writes of echolocation. “Even the loudest ultrasonic sound blown directly into our ears would feel like nothing more than an empty, ghostly breath of wind.” Nature lovers won’t regret tuning in. (Oct.)

Compulsive Reader

"Impeccably written, soundly researched, and utterly fascinating. . . . Between and around the book’s hard science, the author wraps accessible and warmly told human narratives such as the tale of the dying man who on his last sea trip first realized whales communicated with each other. Thus, The Sounds of Life is filled with a certain kind of wild, brilliant charm that makes it very readable for the scientific and the nonscientific minded alike."

From the Publisher

Winner of the AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books for Young Adults

Finalist for the PROSE Award in Popular Science and Mathematics, Association of American Publishers

"Winner of the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award, Northland College"

"Winner of the Nautilus Book Award, Animals & Nature Section"

"Winner of the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize, BC and Yukon Book Prizes"

Mongabay

"Bakker’s book is full of stories of wonder and curiosity about the world of sound that constantly surrounds humanity."

Globe & Mail

"Nature lovers will delight in [Bakker's] chronicle of the emerging technologies tuning us into a new world of non-human sound and conversation."

Globe and Mail

"Nature lovers will delight in [Bakker's] chronicle of the emerging technologies tuning us into a new world of non-human sound and conversation."

The Globe and Mail

"Nature lovers will delight in the...chronicle of the emerging technologies tuning us into a new world of non-human sound and conversation"

Product Details

BN ID:	2940176926804
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	10/18/2022
Edition description:	Unabridged

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