Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

This book gives a variety of examples where science has shown different examples of animals acting smart, being self-aware, and in ways we can relate to them.

I like the authors proposition that we should not discount the ability of all of life to exhibit intelligence, most of which is related to their requirements to survive.

As far as consciousness, or being self aware, these are general terms and pretty much subjective even within our species. The author explains this very well, a book well worth the time.

This book tells us that animals have cognition. When you interact with your pet dog, it isn’t just an automaton responding reflexively to Pavlovian stimuli, it actually has awareness. It thinks. It has cognition.

Were you ever in any doubt about this? I wasn’t. It’s the most obvious fact in the world that pets have consciousness and awareness. They have ‘minds’ just like we do (if there is such a thing!). This book argues this fact as if an army of behaviourist scientists are disputing it, which I suppose they must be, but to me it’s pretty obvious and so the basic message of this book isn’t an astounding life-changer.

But the book does add a lot of breadth and depth to this basic premise. For one thing, it challenges the notion that human cognition is essentially different (and superior) to all other animal cognition. He provides lots of examples of primate cognition which are very hard to separate from the way we think, such as planning for the future and understanding the motivations of other members of a social group. He makes the case that animal cognition has been underestimated by behaviourists because they tend to study animals in laboratories. Laboratories are unnatural environments which do not bring the best out of animals. They are much better studied in their natural environments. Many imaginative experiments have been performed in natural environments proving that animals function at a high cognitive level.

And this extends beyond primates to other animals: Elephants, dolphins (who know each other by name), birds and invertebrates, such as the octopus. They’re all shown in this book to be much cleverer than they’ve previously been given credit for, and it is hard to deny that they have consciousness.

It’s an entertaining book that probably won’t change your World View too much (unless you’re a behaviourist), and the take-home message is ‘animals are smarter than you think’.

For a person without technical knowledge of animal behavior, this book stretched me to see the intelligence and cognition of animals in new ways. I now have a much greater appreciation of my dogs mental capacity, his emotional life and depth of attachment.

Once again Mr. Frans de Waal is opening eyes to the intelligence, character and political nature of animals, including us humans. In spite of our human egos and pre conceptions. The natural world is full of intelligent acts. From chimpanzee politics and social planning to killer whales hunting seals by isolating them. And, the incredible octopus, turning the tables on sharks.
I highly recommend this listen!! It opened my eyes to human short comings when it comes to the question of what intelligence really is!!!
Plus Mr. Sean Runette's narration! As always, is perfect for this type of material!!! He is quite possibly then most versatile narrator out there!!!👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽

Great arguments for intelligence of animals, when judge from animal perspective. Loads of examples and stories. Nothing really new, except for perspectives sake. Humans think animals should be rated from a human point of view. Wrong! Narrator is one of my favorites! Very warm and easy on ears.

I love the information about animals, animal research and the connection to man

I loved the information and the knowledge we have learned about animals

The reader had a passion for the book also.

oh, never, the books i enjoy are best absorbed in many sittings, much to much to think about and delightful.

a grand bit of knowledge.

The entire book was interesting and captivating. It answered many questions I had about how animals think and understand. I still have many questions that were left unanswered, yet that may not be in the scope of the book.

I wish the book was twice as long.

Fun and educational. An excellent listen. Highly recommend to animal lovers and those fascinated by science.

I listened to 8 of 12 chapters hoping it would turn around, but then I couldn't take it any longer. I was looking forward to a fascinating narrative of the observed intelligence of a variety of animals, but this was mostly a dry rambling dissertation/critique of other ethologists and psychologists with occasional descriptions of experiments demonstrating intelligence or our failure to design such experiments properly. If you want to hear 10 hours of 'cognition' pronounced three times a minute, then this text is for you. I am usually not bothered by narrators quirks, but this one's ill fitting denture only added to the annoying narrative.

This book made me an even bigger fan of Fans de Waal. Brave and compelling