Supernavigators

Exploring the Wonders of How Animals Find Their Way

By: David Barrie

Narrated by: David Barrie

Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's Summary

A globetrotting voyage of discovery celebrating the navigational superpowers of animals - by land, sea, and sky

Animals plainly know where they're going, but how they get there has remained surprisingly mysterious - until now. 

In Supernavigators, award-winning author David Barrie catches us up on the cutting-edge science. Here are astounding animals of every stripe: Dung beetles that steer by the light of the Milky Way. Ants and bees that rely on patterns of light invisible to humans. Sea turtles and moths that find their way using Earth's magnetic field. Humpback whales that swim thousands of miles while holding a rock-steady course. Birds that can locate their nests on a tiny island after crisscrossing an ocean. 

The age of viewing animals as unthinking drones is over. As Supernavigators makes clear, a stunning array of species command senses, skills - and arguably, types of intelligence - beyond our own. Weaving together interviews with leading animal behaviorists and the groundbreaking discoveries of Nobel Prize-winning scientists, David Barrie reveals these wonders in a whole new light.

©2019 David Barrie (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Some interesting tidbits but frustratingly slow

tl;dr - Wait for a sale and listen at 1.75x speed.

OVERALL - 2/5 ("It's Ok")
If this is a subject matter that interests you, you'll probably find parts of this book to like. It does interest me, so I enjoyed the facts that were presented. A fair bit of time is spent on not just the "why" something happens but the "how" we came to learn about it. That was at times more interesting than others.

There's also a lot of "this happens and nobody really knows why..." which is then followed by some possible theories, but it is usually one of the same two or three theories presented all throughout the book, so those parts felt a bit redundant.

I got this book on a daily deal sale, and I'm fine with that. Had I spent a monthly credit I probably would have been disappointed.


PERFORMANCE - 1/5 ("Not For Me")
While David Barrie actually has a pleasant voice for narration, this book need a lot of help in the production department. First, and most painfully obvious, is the speed at which Barrie speaks. He's stuck in permanent slow motion and if I had to listen to this book at 1x speed I wouldn't have made it to the end of the first chapter. I had to bump it up to 1.75x to get it tolerable (and I rarely bump up my audio speed).

Second, while not a huge deal, there is also page turning clearly audible on the recording. It wasn't too distracting, but it was definitely noticeable.


STORY - 3/5 ("Pretty Good")
This isn't so much one continual stories as it is a collection of historical anecdotes, interviews and factoids. Some are interesting and some are misses but the subject matter is interesting. I've not read a lot of other books on this subject so if there may be more engaging examples I do not have anything else to compare this title to.

When will Publishers learn? When will I learn not to buy?

I do not blame authors for mistakingly thinking that they are a narrator. I blame the publisher. How can a publisher allow an author that sounds like he has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease to use his undulating, halting breathy voice to narrate?! It’s an even more terrible shame when the content of the book is excellent, captivating and thoroughly enjoyable. I simply had to stop listening. It pained me to do so, but not nearly as much as it pained me to listen to this very distracting voice of an author who sounded like he was continually climbing to the top of the stairs.

VERY VERY SLOW

This book may have been very valuable to listen to, but the narrator/author read it so slowly that it became boring and I couldn’t listen to the whole book. Sad because I wanted to listen.

heavy but fasinating

maybe not for someone wanting a brief overview, but absolutely fascinating details and overall information.

Ugh

This is so very dry and long winded. Plus the author's attitude is rather a bore

A lot of science explained well to us laymen

There is a factual topic here which one might consider dry or boring but it is NOT! I I do, however, recommend listening to it for 2 reasons: it is way too well written and explain to snooze out and miss much of it; and listening to the author read it helps you get the info in the way she intended. For example, there was 1 simple sentence which I would have just read over when in reality, it was a super cute joke

I truly enjoyed this. Hope all you do too.

Fascinating

It's like your grandfather sits you down to tell you a story and it turns out he's a friggin genius! And for that you ignore the weird noises he makes with his mouth and you take it all in. Fascinating information with some great connections to our modern lives.

Recent Audible Daily Deal

Well, the description sounds interesting. The bottom line is that there are lots of theories but few established facts presented.

The publisher should have hired a professional narrator.

Very fascinating but lacks some cohesion

The content was very interesting indeed but I had hoped for more to tie it altogether. Each chapter was engaging and had truly fascinating information presented but nothing really tied them together and you could very well switch the order of most of the chapters and hardly notice much of a difference. I really wish there was more of an overarching theory or something to tie the different navigation methods together or at least a summary chapter which just collated all the different animals discussed throughout the book and categorised them. That would make the content much easier to remember and digest.

Interesting subject, intolerable narrative

The cadence of the naration was mind boggling. Couldn't tolerate past first chapter. Disappointing.