The Call of the Honeyguide
What Science Tells Us about How to Live Well with the Rest of Life
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
A "soulful tribute" (New York Times) that shows how rethinking our relationships with other species can help us reimagine the future of humankind
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
In the woodlands of sub-Saharan Africa, sometime deep in our species’ past, something strange happened: a bird called out, not to warn others of human presence, but to call attention to herself. Having found a beehive, that bird—a honeyguide—sought human aid to break in. The behavior can seem almost miraculous: How would a bird come to think that people could help her? Isn’t life simply bloodier than that?
As Rob Dunn argues in The Call of the Honeyguide, it isn’t. Nature is red in tooth and claw, but in equal measure, life works together. Cells host even smaller life, wrapped in a web of mutual interdependence. Ants might go to war, but they also tend fungi, aphids, and even trees. And we humans work not just with honeyguides but with yeast, crops, and pets. Ecologists call these beneficial relationships mutualisms. And they might be the most important forces in the evolution of life.
We humans often act as though we are all alone, independent from the rest of life. As The Call of the Honeyguide shows, we are not. It is a call to action for a more beneficent, less lonely future.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Biologist Dunn (A Natural History of the Future) comprehensively explores mutualism, or mutually beneficial relationships between different species, in this stunning survey. Offering a corrective to the view that nature is dominated by competition and predation, Dunn's vivid descriptions of interspecies interactions make clear that mutualism is everywhere. Examples include the single-celled Mixotricha paradoxa, which can only be found inside the guts of an Australian termite. The organism is hosted and fed by the insect, and helps the termite metabolize wood. Elsewhere, mutualism is found between the honeyguide bird and humans. Dunn explains that the honeyguide eats wax found in beehives, but cannot access it, so it developed a unique call to signal to humans living in its sub-Saharan African habitat that it has located a beehive. The humans break into the hive for the honey, thus providing the birds access to the wax. Dunn's case studies are often mind-blowing (one type of Amazonian ant "kill their host's competitors by spraying venom into the leaves of the seedlings of any other trees that attempt to grow up around them") and his moving argument that humanity is reliant on thousands of mutualisms is well-made. This is a triumph of popular science.
