[.ca] The Elephant's Secret Sense: The Hidden Life of the Wild ... (ISBN 0743284410)

A Powerful Read:
The Elephant's Secret Sense is a compelling journey of discovery told with a clear and intimate voice that is rare in this genre of writing. Dropped into the middle of rural Africa straight out of graduate school, Caitlin O'Connell used her wits and the lessons learned from a tiny Hawaiian insect, to turn a difficult experience of keeping crop raiding elephants out of fields, into the discovery that elephants are communicating with seismic signals. While this voyage of discovery, with its twists, turns and occasional brush with feisty lions kept me turning the pages, it was the inner layers of the book, about the complex and often difficult relationships between rural communities and elephants that gave the story its soul. Caitlin O'Connell has spent thirteen long years working with elephants and it shows. Whether she was flying high above the free ranging elephant herds of southern Africa, or teaching a single female zoo elephant to communicate with her, she managed to share the unique sights, sounds and emotions of the moment that make a book like this so memorable. Caitlin O'Connell finds that difficult balance between the scientific objectivity and compassion that is rare and much appreciated and I would encourage anyone with an interest in natural history and understanding our place in the world of animals to read this book.