BECOMING A TIGER

Science journalist McCarthy (co-author, When Elephants Weep, 1995) details the interplay between nature and nurture, instinct and learning, in her broad, synthesizing overview of the way animals learn to be animals.

Often tinged with humor (“This species of cuckoo has refined its criminality to a remarkable extent, at least in southern Spain”) and written with an eye for clarity, the text starts with the big picture, asking whether the system of learning is open or closed, and then zeroes in on the particulars, both demonstrable and theoretical. McCarthy introduces the vehicles by which animals go about making their way in the world: social learning and facilitation, observation, imitation, accustomization, trial and error, socialization, habituation, practice, emulation, Pavlovian and Skinnerian conditioning, the role of play. What most interests her is what happens when the complexity of the environment demands more than what can be reliably supplied by the genome. How does an otter know to dry off rather than succumb to hypothermia? What are the consequences of cross-fostering, as when a rabbit is raised in the company of dogs? A heavy compendium of animal-learning anecdotes buttresses the theories: yes, McCarthy explains how a tiger becomes a tiger, but she also wonders: What about those frillfin gobies? The author underscores the lengths to which scientists go. “Researchers tried hard to instill fear of flowers in monkeys, using the same techniques that had instilled fear of snakes,” she writes, “and they couldn't do it.” But who would cast a stone at them for failure? What makes this a pleasure to read is the unadulterated delight McCarthy takes in her research, from the “raven Einstein” of Bernd Heinrich to her fellow humans, great innovators because they are “remarkably ill-equipped with innate technologies.”

A prodigious summation of accepted and conjectural animal-learning capabilities, agreeably witty and bell-clear, though it includes all the exceptions and complications.