ubiquitous. I think that with their accessible writing styleArnqvist and Rowe have succeeded in convincingly con-veying this message to a wide audience. They have pro-duced a book that is highly suitable for students andpertinent for researchers in the field, but can also be rec-ommended as essential reading for anyone with an inter-est in animal reproduction.

JORIS M. KOENEFaculty of Earth and Life Sciences,Vrije Universiteit, De Boelelaan 1085,1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands

1440 ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR, 70, 6

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2005.07.003

Encyclopedia of Animal Behaviour. Edited by MARC BEKOFF.Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press (2005), Pp.lC1274. Price £200.00 hardback.

Reviewing an encyclopaedia is very different from review-ing monographs or other kinds of edited volumes: youcan’t really sit down and read it from cover to cover, andit’s not really intended for that kind of use anyway.Consequently, we decided that, as we went about ourdaily business, we would read the entries relating to issuesof some current concern to us, following up cross-referenced entries as the mood took us. In this way, wecovered more or less all of the material in the book, pluswe got a good feel for the way in which it functioned asa work of reference.The first thing to say, of course, is that compiling and

editing an encyclopaedia just shy of 1500 pages is nomean feat: ensuring all the authors keep to their deadlines,reading and commenting on each piece submitted, andkeeping track of who’s done what and who hasn’t,requires dedication, excellent organizational skills anda steadfast belief in the task. In this sense Marc Bekoff’sEncyclopedia of Animal Behavior is an immensely worthyand admirable endeavour. Moreover, there is a real senseof enthusiasm for the subject that shines through,particularly in Jane Goodall’s foreword, Bekoff’s ownintroductory piece and, most encouragingly, a section oncareers in animal behaviour. This last is a topic rarely cov-ered by standard texts, but is something in which peopleare interested; not least the students and school childrenat whom this book is primarily directed. Other unusualtopics destined to catch the imagination include ‘animalarchitecture’ (including some lovely photos of excavatedants’ nests, although they could have been bigger) andsome very interesting work on differences in visionbetween long-faced dogs such as Afghan hounds andshort-faced ones such as pugs and bulldogs.Having said all this, however, the world of animal

behaviour we encountered in these pages was not onewe found very familiar or in which we necessarily felt athome. In general, the encyclopaedia came across ascuriously old-fashioned, with a coverage of topics and

taxa that was very uneven and idiosyncratic, and with aninordinate amount of discussion concerning the mentallives of animals (what it is like to be a dog, cat, kangaroo orchimpanzee), rather than animal behaviour per se; that is,what they actually do and why.

With respect to the first point, a good illustration ofwhat we mean is given by the biographical coverage ofimportant figures. Naturally, Darwin is there, as are vonFrisch, Lorenz and Tinbergen who, as winners of thediscipline’s only Nobel prize, rightly all have individualentries. So too do John Maynard Smith and W. D.Hamilton (curiously referred to throughout as ‘the lateW. D. Hamilton III’, suggesting some confusion with theAmerican biologist W. J. Hamilton III, who, while perhapsunpunctual, is, as best we know, still with us). RobertTrivers, E. O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins, on the otherhand, don’t; nor do Geoff Parker, Sandra Vehrencamp,Stephen Emlen, John Krebs or any number of the otherindividuals who have been central to the development ofthe field as it is today. While space is always at a premium,these omissions lend somewhat arbitrary air to the pro-vided biographies of Donald Griffin and MargaretWashburn.

Some feel for this unbalanced coverage can be gainedfrom the treatment of ‘methodology’. While generallybroad, the section is oddly organized and there is someoverlap and redundancy. DNA fingerprinting has an entryof its own but then crops up again in the entry onmolecular techniques. There are only nine lines devotedto statistical analyses, but two pages devoted to pseudor-eplication (one of which is a box which, ironically,replicates the text from the main entry almost exactly).There is also a strangely detailed entry (six and a halfpages) on ethograms, the construction of which isdescribed as ‘an ongoing joy’. This will come as a surpriseto many practitioners of a certain age, who found theatheoretical emphasis tedious and whose enthusiasticrejection of its formalities makes it an old-fashionedtechnique to emphasize. By contrast, Linda Fedigan’s piece(‘Zen and the art of monkey watching’) conveys, in onlythree pages, all that is most satisfying about studying thebehaviour of another species. Lukas Noldus provides anentry on computerized data analysis that, while broad andcomprehensive, also manages to be an unabashed salespitch for the products made by his company.

This partiality is reflected in many other entries. Thevery first article, for example, on aggressive behaviour andits relation to primate sociality, by Alyn Brereton, presentshis own ideas (the coercion-defence hypothesis) as re-ceived wisdom, which is by no means the case, and doesnot give due credit to other earlier work (or the fact that itis at least as well supported as his pet theory). Similarly, anentry on deception in bonnet macaques by Anindya Sinhacontains numerous large claims concerning the mentalabilities of these monkeys with absolutely no data, or evensupporting references, to back them up. Obviously not allthe entries are as poorly judged: Nicky Clayton andNathan Emery’s entry on cache robbing, for example,deals with a similar issue but never goes beyond what thedata allow.

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2005.08.002

Biology and Conservation of Wild Canids. Edited by D. W.MACDONALD & C. SILLERO-ZUBIRI. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press (2004). Pp. xivC450. Price $74.50 paper.

Macdonald & Sillero-Zubiri state in the preface that thisbook was part of a three-fold project that transpired in2001: the revision of the IUCN Canid Action Plan, theCanid Biology and Conservation Conference, bringingtogether the world’s leading authorities on canids, and thedevelopment of the most compendious work yet pub-lished on wild canids, their biology and conservation. Thisbook is the result of their vision.The dramatic overview by Macdonald & Sillero-Zubiri

sets the tone for this scholarly work. This comprehensivebook is divided into three distinct sections: ‘Reviews’,‘Case Studies’ and ‘Conclusions’, a conservation perspec-tive. ‘Reviews’, the strongest and most compelling sectionof the book, lays the groundwork for all canid issues. Thissection is divided into seven review chapters, eachauthored by at least three authors from different institu-tions, encompassing expertise in the field. Chapterscovered are ‘Dramatis Personae’ (written by the editorsand sharing their fascination and dedication to canids),‘Ancestry’, ‘Population Genetics’, ‘Society’ (an extremelyimportant part of all canid society), ‘Management’, ‘In-fectious Disease’ (the greatest threat to canid speciessurvival in nature) and ‘Tools’.The case studies, written by leading experts on each

particular species, provide a dramatic glimpse into thelives of these species. This is the largest section of thebook, taking an in-depth look into the detail and intricacyof long-term field studies of 15 of the 36 species of canids(the domestic dog was omitted from this work). Onlythree species of canids are present in both the Old andNew World: the Arctic and red foxes and the grey wolf.Distribution of wild canid species by country is notedin the book’s first chapter: 79% of the world’s 192countries have wild canids, and Sudan has the mostspecies (10).The third section, ‘Conclusions’, is on conservation

from theory to practice, without bluster. The title of thischapter sets the tone for the future of canids. We areexposed to the many issues involved in the long-termconservation of canids. According to the IUCN Red Listassessment of all 36 wild canid species, nine (25%) arelisted as threatened (three critically endangered: Darwin’sfox, island fox, red wolf; three endangered: African wilddog, dhole and Ethiopian wolf; three vulnerable: Blan-ford’s fox, bushdog and dingo) and one species (manedwolf) is considered near-threatened. The majority (56%)are considered safe and listed as least concerns, and six(17%) are listed as data-deficient. Macdonald & Sillero-Zubiri carefully guide us through the myriad of challengesfacing both the survival of canids and of gathering ofsound scientific information on the data-deficient species.The main themes highlighted through this conclusivesection include distribution, abundance and monitoring,

BOOK REVIEWS 1441

On the whole, though, the lack of balance is perhapsthe most worrying aspect of this enterprise, since the bookis clearly aimed at a young, general readership, and, as anencyclopaedia, offers itself as a comprehensive and ex-haustive overview of animal behaviour. Whether itachieves this is moot. While sexual selection musterstwo pages, the shredding behaviour of rodents gets seven.There are 12 pages on horses, but insects (all of them)don’t even get their own entry. There are 184 pagesdevoted to welfare and pain, but only three and a halfto hormones and behaviour. There is only one page givenover to infanticide, but, amazingly, six pages on animaltelepathy.The latter article, by Rupert Sheldrake, begins with the

statement that 48% of dog owners and 33% of catowners said that their pets responded to their thoughts.These kinds of ‘data’ are presented unquestioningly,which seems remiss given the results regularly thrownup by polls and questionnaires of this sort. (Our currentfavourite is the Time/CNN poll conducted after theWorld Trade Centre attacks. When asked whetherCongress should declare war, 62% of respondents said‘yes’, but when asked ‘against whom?’, 61% said ‘don’tknow’, while 2% responded ‘no-one/just declare war’;see http://www.ajr.org/article_printable.asp?idZ2748.)Sheldrake then goes on to run through some of his ex-periments that, while ruling out certain alternative ex-planations for telepathic behaviour, do not actuallyprovide any concrete evidence that dogs and cats aretelepathic or, indeed how this kind of telepathy is actu-ally supposed to work. Merely stating that ‘telepathyseems the only hypothesis that can account for thefacts’ is not quite good enough. As Francis Wheen(2004) points out, ‘it’s good to keep an open mind,but not so open that your brain falls out’. At the veryleast someone else should have been given the chanceto provide an entry presenting a counterargument tothe notion that animals can read minds.It should be made clear that most of the individual

entries do what they set out to do very competently.As a compilation, though, the uneven and often un-discriminating coverage of the field, combined with thehigh cover price (£200.00), make us reluctant to recom-mend this book as essential for either the library or forpersonal use.

LOUISE BARRETT*PETER HENZIy

*School of Biological Sciences,Crown Street,University of Liverpool,Liverpool L69 7ZB, U.K.yDepartment of Psychology,University of Central Lancashire,Preston PR1 2HE, U.K.

Reference

Wheen, F. 2004. How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered the World. London:

Harper Perennial.