| The Magazine of the CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES |
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Reviews Luis Baptista's Legacy Nature's Music: The Science of Birdsong, edited by Peter Marler and Hans Slabbekoorn. Elsevier Academic Press, San Francisco, CA, 2004. 513 pp., $74.95 hardcover n June 2000, the California Academy of Sciences lost its beloved curator of birds, Luis Baptista, who passed away in his home in Petaluma. Luis was one of the world's premier experts on birdsong, song learning, and geographic variation in song, and his appreciation and enthusiasm for birdsong as music enchanted everyone who knew him or heard him give a public lecture. So in November of 2001, many of his close friends and scientific colleagues assembled at the Academy to celebrate Luis's life and work at a symposium entitled "Nature's Music." The symposium organizers, Luis' colleagues, Peter Marler, Hans Slabbekoorn, and Academy researcher Sylvia Hope, produced an exceptional program which they have expanded into a wonderful book. The volume is a landmark for birdsong research. Fourteen chapters span research topics from the history of birdsong studies, to birdbrain research, to the ecology of song, to the evolution of song and song learning, to singing, socializing, and making music. The chapters, mostly written by leading researchers, summarize the latest achievements in the various fields of birdsong research. One of the great strengths of the book is its use of beautiful examples to teach key concepts. Numerous research studies are recounted, along with their associated lessons and interpretations. Interspersed, one finds a plethora of boxes containing everything from instructions on how to read sonograms to demonstrating the dialects of parrots and the songs sung during nocturnal migrations. But what really drives these lessons home are two CDs that contain over 90 tracks each (many have more than one bird song per track). These superb recordings accompany sonograms or points in the text, so readers can read about particular songs while listening to them. It is easy to find the associated sounds on the CD (although not quite as easy to work in the opposite direction). Today's amateur birders deserve a sophisticated presentation of the natural history of birdsong. This book delivers. The academic-level information in Nature's Music comes across in easy-to-read prose. This book isn't for everyone, but it will be essential for serious students of bird song and appreciated by the knowledgeable amateur. It is now summer and birds are on their breeding grounds. Birdsong fills the air. Why are birds singing? How do they learn to sing? Why does birdsong differ in different habitats? What are birds saying? If questions like these interest you, you will appreciate Nature's Music. And if you followed Luis Baptista's work and learned from him, you will appreciate what a lovely monument this is to his memory. Unplain Vanilla Vanilla: The Cultural History of the World's Most Popular Flavor and Fragrance, by Patricia Rain. Jeremy P. Tarcher, New York, NY, 2004. 367 pp., $22.95 hardcover. In recent years writers have plied the commodities trade to resounding success. They have traced the cultural histories of consumables from cod, cattle, potatoes, salt, cacao, and apples to tobacco and marijuana. Vanilla is another in this growing genre. Author Patricia Rain-the self-styled "Vanilla Queen," anthropologist, culinary historian, lecturer, vanilla broker and consultant-has produced a comprehensive treatment. Most people are only familiar with the form of vanilla produced as bottled liquid extract, a substance expensive enough to have spawned cheaper synthetic flavorings. Far fewer consumers are aware that the divine fragrance of vanilla is derived from the seed pods of at least 150 species of orchids. Of these, only two native to the Americas are edible and commercially viable: Vanilla planifolia, which caused an insatiable demand when introduced to Europe in the mid-1600s, and Vanilla pompona Schiede. A third edible species, Vanilla tahitensis, believed to be a hybrid of the other two, has become a favorite in culinary circles. Rain's interest in the geographical areas where vanilla is produced will appeal to both the armchair traveler and the historian. The botany of orchids is complex, but Rain guides us ably through pollination and fruit production and amply explains why vanilla, the most labor intensive agricultural product in the world, is so expensive. From initial planting to final drying and curing, the process can take up to five years. There is evidence of the Mesoamerican Olmecs' use of vanilla going back as far as 2,500 years before the Spanish conquest. While the Olmecs were quite possibly the first to domesticate cacao and use vanilla in association with it, it was the Totonacs who, some time after a.d. 650 according to their legends, were the first to produce vanilla in a managed way and make it central to their lives and lore. Rain then takes us to Tahiti, Indonesia, Reunion, and Madagascar where vanilla has been introduced and where these orchids are now economically important. Madagascar is the largest exporter today, cornering 75 percent of the world market at about $200 per kilo. Many interruptions to the text, from indigenous legends to overly abundant recipes, make Vanilla "stop and go" reading, and an index would have helped. But one of the world's most popular flavorings has a devoted servant in Patricia Rain, who brings the reader from vanilla's fascinating past to present day issues of biotechnology and fair trade issues involving this "green gold." Bad Dog Vicious: Wolves and Men in America, by Jon T. Coleman. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2004. 288 pp., $28.00 hardcover. In many places Vicious is a far from easy read: graphic accounts of cruelties meted out to wolves that curdle the stomach and rub modern sensibilities raw. But reporting such sadism is not some sad stylistic attempt to bring Sam Peckinpah into natural history writing. Instead author Jon Coleman shows just how different past attitudes were toward the continent's largest wild dog. But Coleman is a university-trained historian. He constantly affirms that the past is slippery, that old documents are rich in unstated preconceptions, requiring a careful dissection that can tell as much about the teller as about the subject. And, as a biological neophyte, Coleman has a refreshing sense of wonder about recent scientific revelations of wolves' complex social lives. It was once perfectly okay to release captured wolves with their mouths wired shut, to put out gut-ripping hooks hidden in tallow ball bait, or to drag them behind horses until they were torn apart. Such cruelty was sanctioned, even encouraged by writers such as pilgrim brethren, visiting European noblemen, and John James Audubon. Yet, today, there is furor over wolves being shot from helicopters. Vicious seeks to explain the social history that catapulted an animal once uniformly reviled to (for many) near-iconic status. In the process we see wolves used for cross-cultural metaphors, learn about Native Americans' perceptions and uses of wolves, and encounter a near lost world of wolf traps, wolf bounties, and the threatening spaces that lurked between towns. To colonists newly arrived from wolf-free England, America's wolves became a personification of "the other": the wilderness, the unknown, and everything that was dark, uncontrollable, and untamable. The nailing of wolf heads to pilgrim meeting houses might seem odd now, but it made sense when a totem was needed to show The Wild what you were made of. This legacy of fear lives with us still, summoning atavistic legislation and high-powered rifles whenever a perceived threat to livestock rears its ravening head. Hard to read in places, hard to believe in others, Vicious provides fascinating documentation of the savagery lurking just beneath humanity's civilized surface. Lost Call The Carolina Parakeet: Glimpses of a Vanished Bird, by Noel F. R. Snyder. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2004. 168 pp., $29.95 hardcover. One of the first things Noel Snyder shows is that the Carolina parakeet was inappropriately named. Though certainly a parakeet (albeit in its own unique genus, Conuropsis), it was probably found from the Atlantic coast nearly to the Rockies, and from Nebraska down to Florida, where it occurred in screeching flocks several hundred birds strong. A second thing that becomes swiftly apparent is that not much is actually known about North America's only endemic parrot. Diet, nesting behavior, habitat preferences, reason(s) for extinction and even the very date of its demise have all been the subject of vigorous ornithological contention. Part of the problem is that some populations toughed out freezing northern winters while others used steamy southern cypress swamps. It was a generalist with a varied diet and a variety of nesting and social behaviors. Though Snyder delves deep into archives and museum records, he also accesses an information goldmine with interviews of old-time backwoods residents of Florida's Okeechobee region, the last known haunt of Conuropsis carolinensis. Many hunters, 'gator men', moonshiners, plume hunters, egg collectors, and guides to the curious ended their working days on conservation programs. Their knowledge (teased out by Snyder's interviewing techniques) provides insights that would otherwise have vanished. Sifting this combination of evidence, Snyder reveals that this group-roosting parrot probably sequestered toxins from its food and entered nocturnal torpor. He also concludes that the last Carolina Parakeet did not die in Cincinnati zoo in 1914, but hung on in the wild until the late 1930's. The cause of its final demise was probably not the oft-cited combination of habitat destruction and hunting (it was a weed-seed eating generalist and tasted foul), but diseases caught from domestic poultry. This is a wonderful compendium, caveated and collated with care. Snyder deserves great credit for a fascinating effort that comes as close as it is possible to get to the resurrection of what must have been a wonderful bird. A Matter of Taste Why Some Like it Hot: Food, Genes, and Cultural Diversity, by Gary Paul Nabhan. Island Press, Washington, DC, 2004. 233 pp., $24.00 hardcover. A glass of wine and a bit of brie seems a civilized way to start dinner. But for some, these common foods are physically verboten. Just a few sips of alcohol flushes some Asians and Native Americans a shocking shade of pink, while milk and dairy products give many non-Europeans a terrible tummyache. According to ethnobotanist Gary Paul Nabhan, it's no coincidence that these food reactions are restricted to certain ethnic groups. In his latest book, Why Some Like it Hot, Nabhan shows how the foods of our forebears have pruned our genes and digestive systems, and continue to shape our health today. Thousands of years of living in one place, Nabhan demonstrates, has led many cultures to adapt their cuisine and traditions to fit the local environment. For example, spring on Sardinia brings on feasts of fava beans-and seasonal suffering for residents. But Sardinians' very DNA also contains mutations permitting the beans to bring them relief from endemic malaria. Half a world away, in Hawaii, a genetic inability to cope with the modern American diet has left Native Hawaiians grappling with epidemic diabetes. But new projects designed to reacquaint local people with traditional, local foods offers a way to sidestep these dietary ills. These and many other examples make Why Some Like It Hot a fascinating read for gene jockeys and foodies alike. |