Becoming a Tiger by Susan McCarthy, HarperCollins, $24.95, ISBN 0066209242 Reviewed by John Bonner
AS WRITER Susan McCarthy observes in this entertaining and broad-ranging review of the challenges faced by infant animals learning the skills needed in adulthood, biologists fall in love with the animals that they study.
No matter how repulsive the creatures under investigation are to others, there will always be someone rhapsodising about cockroaches or leeches. But there is little mention here of invertebrates, nor (despite the title) that much about tigers. Generally, animal behaviourists are not foolish. They often choose species that are cute like pigmy chimpanzees, as complex and beautiful as dolphins and songbirds, or sharp-witted and active (without being worryingly homicidal) like rats.
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To be fair, it is difficult as well as dangerous to get close to wild tigers to study their early training. But what is there for tiger cubs to learn, beyond stalking and pouncing on smaller creatures? Study of captive-raised tiger cubs is not necessarily applicable to those born in the wild – even if the tale of an orphan tigress called Victoria is a useful insight into what can happen. A breakdown in early socialisation led her to grow up believing she was an Australian sheepdog.
But there is another reason why a disproportionate amount of behavioural work is carried out on primates. Most behaviourists look at animals as a mirror in which they hope, explicitly or not, to see sources of difference between humans and other animals. Disappointingly for those who want an unequivocal distinction, all the evidence in this book suggests that all the tricks once reckoned to be uniquely human can be performed to some extent by other species.