The Dolphin in the Mirror

June 20, 2011
Dolphins have long captivated mankind, and this wide-ranging account of the highly evolved species demonstrates the complexity of this relationshipâand the challenges of writing about our sentimental attachments to animals. Riess's is an enthusiastic if unwieldy project, a hodgepodge of personal memoir, tutorial on captive dolphin behavior, and advocacy for halting large-scale dolphin hunts in Taiji, Japan. While Reiss, director of dolphin research at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, offers lengthy descriptions of her initial studies, she also notes that some of her approach and affinity for her subjects "really came from the gut, my intuition." That doesn't mean she doesn't achieve some groundbreaking insights. Her strengths are clearly in her research rather than her writing. She demonstrates, for instance, that dolphins are self-aware, a quality thought only to exist in the higher primates, though her nonscientific explanation doesn't measure up to her abilities to convey its import ("we felt that our work was a really big breakthrough") and she expresses her attachment to dolphins with the sincere but pedestrian "I am the luckiest person in the world!" Her enthusiasm is contagious, but hinders her from achieving her stated aim: a change in consciousness about ourselves and other animals, not in a fuzzy New Age way but in a way based on science."

July 1, 2011

The director of dolphin research at Baltimore's National Aquarium retraces the path by which science has come to understand dolphin intelligence.

A committed activist on behalf of dolphin welfare, Reiss provides an account of her personal journey and the history of the development of proofs of the creatures' high intelligence. The author chronicles the evolution of the field, beginning with John Lilly's groundbreaking work on their language and concluding with a description of her own experimental work that demonstrates that dolphins are creatures endowed with self-awareness. Reiss also discusses her struggle to get these important findings published in scientific literature. In her doctoral thesis, she proposed a series of rigorous experiments that laid the basis for documenting dolphins' ability to communicate with symbols, recognize their mirror image and even reflect upon their experiences. While involved in her scientific studies, she was also struggling to secure funding and protect the animals she was working with from being sold for commercial exploitation. Reiss movingly conveys her deepening relationship with the dolphins, and she documents how, through each step of the process, and with each new generation, there is a tremendous emotional pull built upon the establishment of communication and empathy between our different species. This has historical antecedents—reflected in classical mythology, as well as in the actual experiences of people rescued at sea by dolphins.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

May 1, 2011

Reiss is a leading dolphin expert and advocate for improved treatment of creatures she sees as among the smartest on the planet. (They even play underwater keyboards for her.) Since she is professor of psychology at Hunter College, director of Dolphin Research at the National Aquarium, adjunct professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology at Columbia, and a member of the Animal Welfare Committee of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, she can deliver the science as well as the sense of emotional connection. A smart and humane book, and who doesn't love dolphins?

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2011

The director of dolphin research at Baltimore's National Aquarium retraces the path by which science has come to understand dolphin intelligence.

A committed activist on behalf of dolphin welfare, Reiss provides an account of her personal journey and the history of the development of proofs of the creatures' high intelligence. The author chronicles the evolution of the field, beginning with John Lilly's groundbreaking work on their language and concluding with a description of her own experimental work that demonstrates that dolphins are creatures endowed with self-awareness. Reiss also discusses her struggle to get these important findings published in scientific literature. In her doctoral thesis, she proposed a series of rigorous experiments that laid the basis for documenting dolphins' ability to communicate with symbols, recognize their mirror image and even reflect upon their experiences. While involved in her scientific studies, she was also struggling to secure funding and protect the animals she was working with from being sold for commercial exploitation. Reiss movingly conveys her deepening relationship with the dolphins, and she documents how, through each step of the process, and with each new generation, there is a tremendous emotional pull built upon the establishment of communication and empathy between our different species. This has historical antecedents--reflected in classical mythology, as well as in the actual experiences of people rescued at sea by dolphins.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)