PREFACE

The design of and preliminary correspondence for this book virtually coincided with the final stages of planning for an international conference on animal communication, with special emphasis on theoretical considerations. This was sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and held June 13-22, 1965, at Burg Wartenstein, in Austria. Twelve of the contributors to this volume— Altmann, Bastian, Bateson, Busnel, Diebold, Hockett, Lenneberg, Marler, Moles, Sebeok, Smith, and Wenner—were also participants in that conference, a report of which, by Alexandra Ramsay, has appeared in Current Anthropology, 7: 251-253 (1966). Some of the papers written for the meeting, or inspired by it, are published here; one, by Peter Marler, has appeared, under the title “Animal Communication Signals,” in Science, 157: 769-774 (1967); and the rest are to come out simultaneously with this book in another, entitled Approaches to Animal Communication, edited by the undersigned and Miss Ramsay, under the imprint of Mouton & Co. The book at hand and Approaches to Animal Communication may, therefore, be considered companion volumes, the contents of the one supplementing those of the other. On behalf of the dozen authors mentioned above, I want to thank the Wenner-Gren Foundation for its assistance to each of us in many ways; and, on behalf of all of us involved in its Symposium 28—in addition to the dozen named, M.-C. Busnel, C. R. Carpenter, E. W. Count, J. M. Moulton, and A. Ramsay—these acknowledgments will deserve to be even more emphatically repeated in the Preface to the second book.

The basic editorial work for this volume was accomplished while I was a Senior Post-doctoral Fellow of the National Science Foundation, during 1966-1967, with tenure at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and while holding a concurrent double appointment at the University of California, Berkeley, in its Department of Anthropology and Institute of Human Learning. For this Fellowship, and for an additional Research Grant (GB-5581) from its Program for Psychobiology, I am grateful to the National Science Foundation. It was at the Center for Advanced Study that I began my concentrated studies in the field of zoosemiotics, in 1960-1961, and I am, once again, deeply indebted to its dedicated staff for placing its splendid research facilities unhesitatingly and fully at my disposal during the past year.

Thirteen of the collaborators have instructed me to record various acknowledgments of their own, and I now cite these in alphabetical order.

Alexander: “This review [Chapter 10] could not have been written without the cooperation of several investigators currently studying the animals I have chosen to discuss. James E. Lloyd of The University of Florida, Gainesville (fireflies), Daniel Otte of The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (grasshoppers), David R. Bentley of The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (crickets), Kenneth C. Shaw of the Iowa State University, Ames (katydids), John Spooner of Augusta College, Augusta, Georgia (katydids), Franz Huber and Wolfram Kutsch of the University of Cologne, Germany (crickets), Thomas E. Moore of The University of Michigan (cicadas), and Thomas J. Walker of The University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida (crickets) have all provided inspiration and information, particularly during the past year. Lloyd, Otte, Shaw, Spooner, and Bentley and Kutsch provided access to unpublished manuscripts that were invaluable for my purposes. Moore allowed me to use unpublished data from a joint study of periodical cicadas carried out in 1963. Huber loaned tapes and gave me permission to make and use audiospectrographs from his recordings of the songs of Gryllus campestris. Robert S. Bigelow of the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, allowed me to use audiospectrographs made from tapes of the songs of hybrid field crickets reared by him. Daniel Otte constructed Fig. 19, and assisted in the preparation of other illustrations. Ann Page, Mitchell Weiss, and Brian Hazlett, all of The University of Michigan, read and criticized the manuscript. I am especially indebted to Franz Huber and David R. Bentley for providing information for the neurophysiological discussion, though I am solely responsible for the speculations, and for the conclusions drawn there.”

Bateson: This contribution (Chapter 22) was prepared under a Career Development Award (MH-21931-02) of the National Institute of Mental Health, and aided by U.S. Naval Ordnance Test Station Contract N.123-(60530) 53792A.

Diebold: “The research upon which this paper [Chapter 19] is based was conducted at Harvard University under the auspices of the Department of Social Relations, where the author served as Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology and Linguistics (1961-1966). It was supported in part by research grants from the following sources: (1) a Social Science Research Council Faculty Research Grant (1965); (2) a Harvard University Faculty Research Grant (Clark Fund, 1966). The research commitment stems from participation in two symposia sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research: (1) “The Origin of Man,” Chicago, April 2-4, 1965; (2) “Animal Communication” [mentioned above]. Grateful acknowledgment of support and encouragement is extended to the Foundation. Much of the material in this paper which relates to ‘facial displays’ and Visual interaction’ is treated in depth in the following unpublished papers by the author: (1) ‘The role of binaural hearing and sound localization in primate communication’ (1965); (2) ‘Homologies in the visual communicative behavior of higher primates and man: Part Y (1966); (3) ‘Facial displays in man and the higher primates: An annotated bibliography’ (in progress). Appreciative acknowledgment of her research activities is expressed to Ann V. Goodsell.”

Hooker: “I am indebted to Professor W. H. Thorpe and to Mr. T. Hooker, who have both kindly read the manuscript [of Chapter 15] and made helpful suggestions.”

Klopfer and Hatch: “We are indebted to Drs. J. P. Hailman, R. H. MacArthur, W. John Smith, and Vance Tucker for discussion, ideas, and critiques. This article [Chapter 3] was written while Klopfer held an NIH Career Development Award and Grant MH 04453.”

Lenneberg: This contribution (Chapter 21) is excerpted from Chapter VI of his Biological Foundations of Language, and is used here by permission of the publishers, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York.

Marler: The author wishes to thank Mrs. Kathryn Bohning and Mrs. Anita Pearson for their criticisms of his paper (Chapter 7).

Poulter: “This investigation was supported in part by Public Health Services Research Grant NB 04736 from the Division of Research Grants, National Institute of Health, and the Arctic Institute of North America under subcontract ONR-371 of the Office of Naval Research. The author is deeply appreciative of the valuable assistance and helpful suggestions from Dr. Marie Poland Fish and Mr. P. J. Perkins for the extensive material supplied by them from the Animal Communication files and Magnetic Tape library of the Narragansett Marine Laboratory. The author further greatly appreciates the time and effort on the part of Drs. Dale W. Rice, G. Dallas Hanna, Robert T. Orr, and Victor B. Scheffer for their review and helpful criticism of the manuscript for this chapter [17].”

Smith: This paper (Chapter 4) was written after attending the Wenner-Gren Symposium mentioned above. “The research upon which it is based has been supported in large part by the following grants from the National Science Foundation: G19261 and GB2904.”

Tavolga: This contribution (Chapter 13) was “supported by the Office of Naval Research [Contract 552(06)] and the National Science Foundation (Grant GB-4364). Drs. Lester R. Aronson, James W. Atz, David W. Jacobs, Donn E. Rosen, and T. C. Schneirla provided many helpful comments and criticisms during the preparation of this paper.”

Tembrock: “For the translation of the manuscript [of Chapter 16] I thank Dr. Hassenberg; the tape recordings of the archives of the Zoological Institute of the Humboldt-University, Berlin, have been taken in the following zoological gardens: Zoological Garden Berlin, Tierpark Berlin, Zoological Garden Prague, Zoological Garden Cologne, Zoological Garden Rostock, Zoological Garden Hannover.”

Wenner: “This work was supported by contract NR 301-800, Office of Naval Research, and by a faculty research grant, University of California. I thank the faculty and graduate students of the University of California for their assistance in preparation of this manuscript [of Chapter 11]. N. Broadston, H. Daly, J. Enright, N. Gary, D. Johnson, R. Lockhart, and W. Murdoch were particularly helpful. P. Wells of Occidental College also contributed to this effort. I further thank R. D. Alexander, J. Enright, N. Gary, H. Laidlaw, and E. Noble for their critical review of the manuscript.”

The preparation for press of the twenty-four articles constituting this volume, the handling of all galley proofs, and the construction of both indexes were the responsibilities of my heedful and gifted assistant, Sybillyn Mehan, a young psychologist (now at the University of California, Santa Barbara) professionally concerned with problems of the ontogeny of language. All of us involved in the book, but of course most particularly and directly myself, are beholden to Mrs. Mehan for her devotion to these jobs.

Final technical processing of all copy was entrusted to Science Bookcrafters, Inc., and Miss Barbara Zeiders, of that firm, took care of the attendant chores with her customary efficiency.

THOMAS A. SEBEOK

Bloomington, Indiana
February 15, 1968