Itemize Books Conducive To Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?
| Original Title: | Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? |
| ISBN: | 0393353664 (ISBN13: 9780393353662) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | Goodreads Choice Award for Science & Technology (2016) |
Frans de Waal
Paperback | Pages: 275 pages Rating: 3.95 | 9449 Users | 1149 Reviews
Particularize Based On Books Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?
| Title | : | Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? |
| Author | : | Frans de Waal |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 275 pages |
| Published | : | April 4th 2017 by W. W. Norton Company (first published April 25th 2016) |
| Categories | : | Nonfiction. Science. Animals. Environment. Nature. Biology. Psychology |
Narrative Concering Books Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?
What separates your mind from an animal’s? Maybe you think it’s your ability to design tools, your sense of self, or your grasp of past and future—all traits that have helped us define ourselves as the planet’s preeminent species. But in recent decades, these claims have eroded, or even been disproven outright, by a revolution in the study of animal cognition. Take the way octopuses use coconut shells as tools; elephants that classify humans by age, gender, and language; or Ayumu, the young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University whose flash memory puts that of humans to shame. Based on research involving crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, whales, and of course chimpanzees and bonobos, Frans de Waal explores both the scope and the depth of animal intelligence. He offers a firsthand account of how science has stood traditional behaviorism on its head by revealing how smart animals really are, and how we’ve underestimated their abilities for too long. People often assume a cognitive ladder, from lower to higher forms, with our own intelligence at the top. But what if it is more like a bush, with cognition taking different forms that are often incomparable to ours? Would you presume yourself dumber than a squirrel because you’re less adept at recalling the locations of hundreds of buried acorns? Or would you judge your perception of your surroundings as more sophisticated than that of a echolocating bat? De Waal reviews the rise and fall of the mechanistic view of animals and opens our minds to the idea that animal minds are far more intricate and complex than we have assumed. De Waal’s landmark work will convince you to rethink everything you thought you knew about animal—and human—intelligence.Rating Based On Books Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?
Ratings: 3.95 From 9449 Users | 1149 ReviewsJudgment Based On Books Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?
If you read only one book on animal cognition or cognitive ethology, make it this one. If you've read a bunch, as I have, read this anyway. There are some that are more interesting, or more focused, but this is the best current summary of the field, at least for a popular audience that I can find. It concisely provides history, anecdotes, references to other works and studies, a look at the future, and plenty of hard science.I sincerely doubt I'll ever read another book published before this. AsI've already pre-ordered it so that I can read it again in print and underline things that strike me and write love notes along the margins. This is the book I wanted to write and I am thrilled that someone eminently more qualified and clever than me has done so. Frans De Waal's "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?" introduces readers thoughtfully and humorously to the evolution of our study of animals bringing us smoothly to the present. De Waal gently shifts paradigms so that we
I cannot give this book less than three stars because it contains lots of totally fascinating information about animals - the greater and lesser apes, whales, octopus, fish, birds and elephants for example. The author is a Dutch primatologist and ethologist. He is the Charles Howard Candler professor of Primate Behavior at the Emory University psychology department in Atlanta, Georgia, and director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. Primate social behavior
Sometimes it can be hard to review a book for what it is instead of for what you wanted it to be. This is probably most true of fiction, but science books also vary in the level of depth to which they explore their topic. It can be tough as a reader to judge what audience the author is after, and that can lead to some discrepancy in the technicality of the reading material than expected. Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? was a book that delved far more in-depth into the field of
The book is about clever experiments conducted to show that primates, crows, elephants, etc. possess a sense of the future and the past, that they can a plan for the future, and that they unequivocally make tools. Moreover the experiments discussed here demonstrate that animals have a sense of compassion, altruism and reciprocity just like us (at our best). All of the experiments with primates are interesting, but the ones with caching birds, like Jayswho inhibit immediate gratification for the
While I enjoyed this, I also found it very dry. I thought de Waal had plenty of fascinating insights and recorded studies of how intelligent animals truly are.
This is another one of my non-reviews -- more of a literary/emotional ramble than an actual critique. Humans are arrogant. This much I know about us as a species, so to answer the question that the title of this book suggests, I would have to say, generally, we haven't a clue how smart animals are. We are just "dumb animals" too, after all, and there is some arrogance in even asking the question. Who is to say we are the better species for running this ole' planet of ours? Empirical evidence
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