Who would have thought that female fruit flies could distinguish a male of their own species from other courting males just by the tune he sings? Or that a tree frog in Borneo adjusts the pitch of his peeps to fit the size and shape of his tree hole so that the hole will act as a resonator, much like an organ pipe? While the vocal prowess of many birds is widely recognized, Ontario science writer and editor Peter Christie has some fascinating stories about the sound-making capacities of other types of creatures, including insects and fish.

In telling how and why they sing, Christie presents solid scientific information with a light and lively touch, though he sometimes overdoes the folksy style. (Chapter headings are amusing – “Recognition: Songs of the Guess Who” and “Predators: Songs in the key of Yikes!”) He effectively conveys information through examples and anecdotes, such as that of the California houseboaters who feared that a terrible nightly drone and growl that disturbed their rest came from secret military testing offshore, but discovered instead that it was the courting song of midshipman fish that had migrated to shallow coastal waters to mate.

Naturally Wild Musicians is attractively produced, with brightly coloured pages, striking bits of information in sidebars, typographically varied representations of the sounds under discussion, and plentiful illustrations. While the text covers a lot of material, the layout breaks it up into appealing and manageable segments for the reader, supporting the efforts of the writer to keep the information concrete, specific, and interesting. A child-friendly list of further reading, a scholarly selected bibliography, and an index make the book a good example of substantial science writing with popular appeal.