This book will be a landmark text for all those interested in animal communication. Animal Vocal Communication explicitly avoids human-centred concepts and approaches and links communication to fundamental biological processes instead. It offers a conceptual framework - assessment/management - that allows us to integrate detailed studies of communication with an understanding of evolutionary perspectives. Self-interested assessment is placed on par with the signal production (management) side of communication, and communication is viewed as reflecting regulatory processes. Signals are used to manage the behaviour of others by exploiting their active assessment. The authors contend that it is this interplay between management and assessment that results in the functioning and evolution of animal communication; it is what communicative behaviour accomplishes that is important, not what information is conveyed.

‘Packed full of cogent example, Donald Owings and Eugene Morton’s Animal Vocal Communication is erudite, wide ranging and fascinating.’

Source: New Scientist

‘… interesting reading … an intellectual challenge … a most welcome contribution for readers with a good knowledge of the literature on animal vocal communication.’

Torben Dabelsteen - IBIS

‘This is the shortest, most clearly written and most interesting of several major books on animal communication that were published in the past 3 years … This is a stimulating and provocative book … I highly recommend it to all primatologists interested in social behaviour and communication.’

Source: International Journal of Primatology