Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures - Hardcover

Morell, Virginia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0307461440 ISBN 13: 9780307461445

Publisher: Crown Publishers, 2013

Synopsis

Noted science writer Virginia Morell explores the frontiers of research on animal cognition and emotion, offering a surprising and moving exploration into the hearts and minds of wild and domesticated animals.
 
   Have you ever wondered what it is like to be a fish? Or a parrot, dolphin, or elephant?  Do they experience thoughts that are similar to ours, or have feelings of grief and love? These are tough questions, but scientists are answering them. They know that ants teach, earthworms make decisions, and that rats love to be tickled. They’ve discovered that dogs have thousand-word vocabularies, that parrots and dolphins have names, and that birds practice their songs in their sleep. But how do scientists know these things?
   Animal Wise takes us on a dazzling odyssey into the inner world of animals from ants to wolves, and among the pioneering researchers who are leading the way into once-forbidden territory: the animal mind. With thirty years of experience covering the sciences, Morell uses her formidable gifts as a story-teller to transport us to field sites and laboratories around the world, introducing us to animal-cognition scientists and their surprisingly intelligent and sensitive subjects.  She explores how this rapidly evolving, controversial field has only recently overturned old notions about why animals behave as they do.  She probes the moral and ethical dilemmas  of recognizing that even “lesser animals”  have cognitive abilities such as  memory, feelings, personality, and self-awareness–traits that many in the twentieth century felt were unique  to human beings.
   By standing behaviorism on its head, Morell brings the world of nature brilliantly alive in a nuanced, deeply felt appreciation of the human-animal bond, and she shares her admiration for the men and women who have simultaneously chipped away at what we think makes us distinctive while offering a glimpse of where our own abilities come from.

About this title

About the Author

Virginia Morell is a prolific contributor to National Geographic, Science, and Smithsonian, among other publications. She is also the author of Ancestral Passions, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; Blue Nile; and coauthor with Richard Leakey of Wildlife Wars.

Reviews

Animals have minds, and they use them. As science-writer Morell (Ancestral Passions, 1996; Blue Nile, 2001) points out, the question isn’t “do animals think?” but “what do they think?” Morell’s journey into the minds of animals (and the researchers who study them) began when she watched her dog invent a game; but she was truly set on her path after clearly being singled out by one of Jane Goodall’s chimpanzee subjects. In this exploration of animal cognition, the author visits numerous scientists and observes their research, both in laboratories and in the wild. She sees firsthand, and reports in thoroughly engaging language, research with animals as disparate as ants and elephants, or from such different lifestyles as rats and dolphins. We learn of ants that teach other ants, of rats that express their social joy through special chirps that resemble laughter, and of elephants that grieve for their dead. Archerfish show us that fish can imitate other fish, and dogs reveal that they understand human rules. --Nancy Bent

Edition details

• Publisher: Crown Publishers
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0307461440
• ISBN 13: 9780307461445
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 291