Table of Contents
Introduction
Van Leeuwenhoek Decides to Look xiii
(New Tools Plus Inquisitive Humans Equals Unexpected Discovery)
1 Enter, Pursued by Whale 1
(The Twenty-First-Century Revolution in Cetacean Biology, and How I Joined It)
2 A Song in the Ocean 19
(How We Saved the Whales by Decoding Them)
3 The Law of the Tongue 35
(Different Species Already Communicate)
4 The Joy of Whales 53
(Do Cetaceans Have the Tools to Talk and Listen?)
5 "Some Sort of Stupid, Big Fish" 71
(What Can Whale Brains Tell Us about Their Minds?)
6 The Search for Animal Language 87
(Let's Avoid the Word "Language")
7 Deep Minds: Cetacean Culture Club 110
(How Dolphin Behaviors Suggest they're Worth Trying to Chat To)
8 The Sea Has Ears 128
(Robots Can Record Whale Communications We Never Could Before)
9 Animalgorithms 145
(How We Can Train Machines to Find Patterns in Cetacean Communications)
10 Machines of Loving Grace 167
(Google Translate for Whales)
11 Anthropodenial 194
(Humans Underestimate Other Animals… and Why It Matters)
12 Dances with Whales 212
(It's Time to Find Out If We Can Speak Whale)
Acknowledgments 229
Notes 233
Photo Credits 267
Index 271
About the Author 285