By Andrew C. Revkin / Source: nytimes

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Regular readers of Dot Earth will already know the work of Carl Safina, who for decades has meshed conservation science, campaigning and communication in a career devoted to building a durable relationship between human beings and the rest of Earth’s living things.

His focus, until now, has been on the ocean and winged, finned or flippered species that depend on it. In his new book, “Beyond Words,” Safina divides his time between the marine and terrestrial worlds, examining animals’ intelligence and feelings both through the lens of science and simply through wonder-filled observation. Apes, lemurs, wolves and their domesticated kin, elephants, dolphins and killer whales are among the subjects in this captivating bestiary of animal behavior.

I particularly enjoyed a chapter titled “Woo-Woo,” a term meant to describe marvels of animal behavior that science has yet to explain. Safina, a longtime friend and fishing buddy, gave me permission to publish an excerpt here. I hope you enjoy it, and explore the book in full. Here’s the excerpt:

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Woo-Woo

…The fact is, killer whales seem capable of random acts of kindness. Acts that defy explanation. Acts that make scientists consider some pretty far-out possibilities. It can seem that killer whale behavior falls into two categories: amazing behavior and inexplicable behavior.

Fog-guidance can seem like an exclusive service that killer whales feel inclined to provide—to people who work to protect them. Once, Alexandra Morton and an assistant were out in the open water of Queen Charlotte Strait in her inflatable boat when she was enveloped by fog so thick she felt like she was, “in a glass of milk.” No compass. No view of the sun. Flat calm; no wave pattern to inform a guess. A wrong guess about the direction home would have brought them out into open ocean. Worse, a giant cruise ship was moving closer in fog so reflective Morton could not tell where its sound was approaching from. She imagined it suddenly splitting the fog before it crushed them.

Then as if from nowhere, a smooth black fin popped up. Top Notch. Then Saddle. And then, Eve, the usually aloof matriarch. Sharky was suddenly peeking at her. Then Stripe. As they clumped close around her tiny boat, Alexandra folled in the fog like a blind person with a hand on their shoulder. “I never worried,” she recalled. “I trusted them with our lives.” Twenty minutes later they saw a materializing outline of their island’s massive cedars and rocky shoreline. The fog opened up. The whales left them. Earlier in the day the whales had been unusually difficult to follow, and had been traveling west toward open ocean. The whales had taken Morton south, home. When the whales left they changed direction toward where they’d just come from and where they had been headed.

Morton felt changed. “For more than twenty years, I have fought to keep the mythology of the orcas out of my work. When others would regale a group with stories of an orca’s sense of humor or music appreciation, I’d hold my tongue…. Yet there are times when I am confronted with profound evidence of something beyond our ability to scientifically quantify. Call them amazing coincidences if you like; for me they keep adding up… I can’t say that whales are telepathic—I can barely say the word—but… I have no explanation for that day’s events. I have only gratitude and a deep sense of mystery that continues to grow.”

We don’t have enough to really go on; the data aren’t enough to analyze. We have a few stories of free-living killer whales guiding people lost in fog; of the whales seemingly returning lost dogs, of free-living killer whales turning in circles as a person makes a circular motion with his finger, or returning a hat worn perfectly for the occasion, or seeing someone wave and waving back, of empathy—of sympathy. In Antarctica my friend Bob Pitman tossed a snowball near a killer whale and the whale immediately tossed back a piece of ice. These stories could be just coincidences. We don’t have the stories in which the whale ignored them and did not respond to their thoughts, their dogs, or their snowballs. I am a hard-hearted disbeliever of things unknown. As a scientist I am persuaded by evidence. And I tend to discount the less material explanations of puzzling phenomena.

More importantly, I don’t see that the whales—even if they are more intelligent than us (whatever intelligence means)—would be “sending us a message”—as one friend of mine believes with all her heart that they are trying to do.

Read more @ nytimes