WILDHOOD

How adolescents across species learn to become grown-ups.

There’s a time in most parents’ lives when they’re tempted to throw their teenage children into the nearest well. So it is across the animal kingdom when puberty sets in and profound changes shape the adolescent being. Write Harvard evolutionary biologist Natterson-Horowitz and science journalist Bowers (co-authors: Zoobiquity: What Animals Can Teach Us About Health and the Science of Healing, 2012), although puberty is thought of as a sexual transformation, it “exerts its hormonal effects on every organ system in the body,” enlarging the heart, lungs, head, and other features and adding strength and power to the form. This allows a human runner to race at newfound speeds and affords the great white shark the wherewithal to bite something and mean business. Adulthood among all species is not confined to just this transformation but also requires the initiate to become part of the group. The authors focus closely on four quite distinct animals—a king penguin, a spotted hyena, a humpback whale, and a wolf—to examine the changes attendant in becoming an adolescent on the way to adulthood, with all its perils. As those who were once teenagers well know, it’s a time fraught with danger, to which animal species have exhibited similar responses—the phenomenon of shoaling, for instance, a “fundamental, lifesaving skill set” that illustrates the adage of there being strength in numbers and, more to the point, in concerted action, whether for a group of reef fish or a squadron of fighter pilots. Sometimes such actions are automatic or nearly so, but many require an awareness of hierarchy: “Each individual has a place. And the social energy that goes into determining those positions is also what holds together the hierarchy." The authors steer clear of excesses of ethology or anthropomorphism, and they emphasize that maturity is not a goal but a process.

A lucid, entertaining account of how creatures of many kinds learn to navigate the complex world that adulthood opens.