Synopses & Reviews
A born naturalist and a fearless traveler, Vladimir Dinets wrote travel guides, conducted field research, and lived a couple of lives before he was accepted into the PhD program in zoology at the University of Miami. He thought crocodiles were a dead-end research topic—survivors from the age of the dinosaurs but not much else—until he witnessed groups of up to seventy alligators performing mating choruses that included infrasound vibrations—a form of communication extremely rare in nature—and a “dance” unknown in the scientific literature but that resembled a scene from
Jurassic Park. To prove his thesis about the language of crocodiles, he spent the next six years traveling around the world on shoestring budgets and in extreme circumstances, studying almost every living species. At the same time, as a man desiring companionship in life, he sought love.
With adventures on five continents, Dragon Songs is his account of this quest. It includes an escape from a boiling lava lake in the Afar Desert, being chased up a tree by a tiger in India, hitching a ride with a cocaine smuggler in Bolivia, and diving with giant Greenland sharks—all in the name of studying crocodiles, among which he routinely paddled in his inflatable kayak. Of course, not everything went according to plan. But, in the end, his ground-breaking research helped change the field. And during the course of his adventures, he met and courted his future wife.
Review
""Dragon Songs grabs you in its jaws like a saltwater croc and rolls you around until the end. The author is remarkable to have merely survived the episodes he recounts in this fascinating book, which reads like Hunter S. Thompson in a kayak, or an airplane, or a bad rental truck in Africa. An inspiring story that should be read by anyone interested in the mingled biologies of crocodiles and humans, or with a zest for travel in the fast lane."
" Will Chaffey, author of < i=""> Swimming with Crocodiles <>
Review
"“This delightful book contains lively travelogs, fascinating verbal portraits (as well as excellent photos) of alligators and crocodiles, and interesting facts about their communication systems. Dinets gives the reader a sense of how natural history and science go hand-in-hand and the thrill of seeing and, perhaps for the first time, understanding the biological significance of their behavior. “
" H. Carl Gerhardt, University of Missouri, Columbia
Synopsis
Like an Eat Pray Love with extreme travel and crocodiles, Dragon Songs tells of a life-changing quest to study our modern dinosaurs—that ends in love.
About the Author
With his artist's eye, scientist precision, and explorer's free spirit, Dinets, a Russian immmigrant and Louisana State University professor, is no ordinary zoologist. Here, he leads readers on an intense and joyous global pursuit of the mating customs of crocodiles ( as well as his own), chroniciling the adventures in fieldwork that would inform his graduate thesis. Along the way, he notes how he prefers assistants "pathologoically prone to risk taking behavior," and on sveral occasions persuaded bush pilots to let him fly their planes -sans license. Dinets is smuggled through Somalia along with "rap music tapes and cases of Coca Cola," and avoids the bandits of Chambal, India (who live near a river filled with hundreds of singing "mugger" crocs); he offers opinions on the politics of science ("negative results are virtually impossible to publish") and seeks out scientific art, like an ancient Chinese "magic bowl" that produces infrasounds- souds at frequencies of less than 20 Hz, the low end of the normal human hearing range - as crocodiles do. Throughout gators and crocs sing, slither, and dance, providing fascinating glimpses of the dinosaurs from which they evolved (the discovery that Siamese crocs feed their yearlings indicates even the earliest dinos may have had "complex parental care"). Dinets offers an exuberant, intelligent take on the adventure of science that has the power to inspire aries of starry-eyed, flack-jacketed Ph.D.'s Photos & maps.
-Publishers Weekly