Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think

Do animals think? Can they count? Do they have emotions? Do they feel anger, frustration, hurt, or sorrow? At last, here is a book that provides authoritative answers to these long-standing questions. Most popular science books t to misrepresent animals, presenting them either as furry little humans or as creatures that cannot feel at all. Marc D. Hauser, an acclaimed scientist in the field of animal cognition, uses insights from evolutionary theory and cognitive science to examine animal thought without such biases or preconceptions. Hauser treats animals neither as machines devoid of feeling nor as extensions of humans, but as independent beings driven by their own complex impulses. In prose that is both elegant and edifying, Hauser describes his groundbreaking research in the field, leading his readers on what David Premack, author of The Mind of an Ape, calls "a masterful tour of the animal mind."

Marc D. Hauser is a professor at Harvard University, where as a Fellow of the Mind, Brain, and Behavior Program he performs laboratory research, supplemented by fieldwork around the world. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife and their menagerie of animals.