Whether these are airtight examples of “culture” is debated. But by living among the animals, in their world, Safina and the field scientists he visits show us something else, something too often overlooked in research and in conservation: who the animals are, and how they live. Though researchers study “species,” this category is less interesting than thinking in terms of families and communities, each making its way at a particular pace and in a particular place. More compelling than facts about species are tales of individuals — characters, with personality — living among peers or kin. So it’s the stories of Safina’s days with these animals that move us: the distinctive rhythms of the whales’ “vertical lives” (they travel from surface to depths to hunt, and sleep vertically); the social complexities of chimpanzee life; the sometime silliness of macaw life, as when the birds “goof off” together, hanging upside down.

“To truly comprehend any creature — including people — you must watch them live on their own terms,” Safina writes. To find the whales, researchers drop a hydrophone into the water and listen through the zillion sounds of the ocean for the distinctive sonar clicks or characteristic codas, group names, of sperm whales, then head in their direction where the whales may be a mile below, or not there at all. It goes on like this for days, sometimes without finding one — and these are the expert whale-finders. The difficulty in merely locating them is an apt metaphor for the profound distance we have from these animals’ worlds, from an understanding of them that is anywhere near complete.

The paradox of trying to get others to appreciate wild animals’ lives is that often we have to simply let them be: not cage them, hunt them, gawk at them. The ideal way to observe animals is to see them through the words of others, frankly — which is what Safina lets us do.