ANIMAL INSTINCTS: Charlotte Uhlenbroek

AS HUMANS we are well aware of the importance of communication, but how do animals send the same kind of messages to each other?

Published to tie-in with the BBC1's four part series "Talking With Animals", this is a perceptive and intelligent journey into methods of communication between all areas of the animal kingdom around the world.

By drawing on her own wealth of experience and research, Charlotte Uhlenbroek explores the variety of signals that are used in interactions between and within species. She explains how understanding some of the universal rules of communication has enabled humans to interact closely with other animals throughout history, and the obvious advantages that this has created. Discussing every possible aspect of animal communication and illustrated throughout with specially created graphics, photographs, and line drawings, this book is the perfect companion to the series and an outstanding book in its own right.

Charlotte Uhlenbroek says: "All animals need to communicate, and in an attempt to find out what they're saying to each other I go swimming with giant cuttlefish and humpback whales, howl with wolves, and am bitten by vicious fire ants. I also discover the strange and unexpected ways in which they send messages."

Charlotte hit the screens in Cousins, where she introduced her extended primate family to the world. She's uniquely qualified to take viewers on this new journey to discover what animals are saying to each other, and even to us. Charlotte has always been fascinated by animal communication, and studied chimp calls for five years in Gombe, Africa, with renowned expert Jane Goodall.

"Eavesdropping is always fascinating," says Charlotte. "But finding out what another species is saying is even better. Some of them are even talking about us." Charlotte wanders over the freezing plains of the Arctic to discover how polar bears find each other from hundreds of miles away. She swims with dolphins and hears them calling to each other by name, uses a robotic bowerbird in Australia to seduce a male, and enters a virtual world to discover how animals fly in flocks.

Talking With Animals unearths cutting edge scientific research and uses the latest filming techniques to reveal a hidden world of communication, more complex and sophisticated than was ever imagined. Humans share with animals the need to keep in touch in order to survive and reproduce. Animals have developed many ways to do this in difficult surroundings such as deserts, underwater, in forests, and crowded colonies. They sing in frequencies people can't hear, detect colours that our eyes can't see, and send messages in worlds of scent, electricity, and polarised light, that are impossible to imagine. (Published by Hodder and Stoughton at £18.99).