Animal Wise: How We Know Animals Think and Feel

This is a book many of us have been waiting decades for. A respected science writer pulls together a report on a wide range of experimental work on animal cognition, organized in an engaging way, focused on unassailable scientific work, and presented in a personal, conversational style that makes for easy reading.That said, let's look at some of the silliness in the low-star reviews.First and foremost, there are the "Oh, ick, it's all about science! How boring!" and the "This isn't science because it doesn't agree with my world view" crowd. To you both, I suggest growing up. Science is a discipline that attempts to make us more informed and better able to understand the world. It requires being able to examine your "world view" and weigh evidence rather than ignore what you don't want to hear. And yes, it's more work than watching Honey Boo-Boo or reading the latest from the James Patterson factory.The claim that this "isn't science" is laughable, even from a cursory glance at the content. Each chapter is focused on a rigorous scientific discipline, usually following a specific experiment through from query to observation and conclusion. The discipline may be the forensic ethology of studying dolphins or elephants in the wild or the clinical lab work, sometimes invasive, on rats and ants, or even a blending of the two, as in the fascinating chapter on parrots. But it's science, which is not a religion and not subject to satisfying your sense of self-importance. As has been noted, the Earth revolves around the Sun, not around you.I have a bit more sympathy for the "Just leave the poor aminals alooone!" crowd, because I find lab work and invasive experiments unpleasant. I'm even troubled (as is Morell) by things like disturbing elephant herds by playing recordings of dead relatives. But a fact that needs to be faced is that the trajectory of human history is destroying species at a catastrophic rate, and our carnage is justified by a willful ignorance about the personhood of other animals, a blithe, self-serving assumption (like the one about blacks that drove slavery or the ones about Jews that promoted the Holocaust) that they are unworthy of survival. If the suffering of a few more -- yes, thousands more -- animals can turn that around, then the Utilitarian argument applies. And the sentimentalists need to grasp that lab animals and zoo captives not only exist, but they only exist because they are lab animals and zoo captives. A chimpanzee who has been born and raised in a cage can either be made comfortable or set free to die in an environment she is no more prepared to cope with than you are. Most lab rats are one hundred generations or more from their "free" forebears. If those lab rats can be proven to have a sense of humor, a sense of self, the ability to plan, what we loosely call "a mind," then perhaps our country will legally recognize them as "animals" with a right to decent treatment. (Rats and mice are excluded explicitly from the definition of "animal" in federal animal welfare law.)Finally, Morell herself addresses the "I don't care what you found. Animals don't think" crowd. Rather poignantly in her epilogue she reports that readers of her manuscript asked her how, after recounting all these examples of animal cognition, she was going to "explain our difference." The issue had come up throughout the book. The ant researcher who proved that ant behaviors fit the scientific behaviorist definition of "teaching," only to have the scientific community change the definition so they couldn't. The chimpanzee researcher reporting the irate email he got from a colleague saying that "with practice," he could do what one of the chimps did just as well as the chimp. "The chimp didn't need practice," the researcher remarks wrily. In the epilogue, Morell explains, to anyone that didn't get it, that she WASN'T going to "explain how we are different," because the whole point of the book is to explain how animals are NOT different, that we are all, plant, animal, and human, patterns in one fabric of evolution. To which I can only add, "Live with it."

Virginia Morell: Animal WiseVirginia Morell's "Animal Wise" is an outstanding book about some of the newest phenomenological studies of the "inner worlds"/"Umwelten" of animals.She deals with many different types of animal spices,- from the focus on the learning and teaching capasities in ants and rats society, fish cognition and awareness of pain via the Umwelten of birds, dolphins, dogs and wolfs,gorillas and chimps and their inner thoughts, emotions and self awareness.Virginia Morell has a superb up to date knowledge of the science of cognitive ethology and zoosemiotics and shows in her way of writing and her documentation a wonderful empathy and respect for each "individuel" animal she describes.The last chapter in her book deals with the important questions of animal welfare and ethics as a result of her long-life engagement with cognitive ethology.One of Moell's essentiel points of view is that the Darwinian gradualism in evolution is much more apt to describe the connection between Man and animals than the usual stress on the gap between "us" and "them"/"the other".When I started my reading of "Animal Wise" I had just ended my study of Dario Martinelli's seminal book "A Critical Companion to Zoosemiotics" (2010).Although these two books in many ways are quite different in style and their focus on animal ethology, - the former a practical stydy of animal behaviour and semiosis, the latter a critical, theoretical intro to zoo semiotics, - I think they have very much in common.They both show the philosophical and ethical high standard of animal research and share the impotens of looking for the "patterns that connect" all living systems in the ecological web of animal semiosis and cognitive behaviour.As Gregory Bateson has stated during his whole scientific life, - first uttered in his "Steps to an Ecology of Mind" - , the study of "the patterns that connect" mind and nature as a whole needs an epistemology of the sacred.Thanks among others to such scientists and authors as Virginia Morell, Dario Martinelli and Gregory Bateson these complex and wonderfully interweaving patterns, mostly hidden for Man in nature, step by step come to light and remind us of our heredity and connection with all living creatures on earth.Mag Art. Carl Christian Glosemeyer AndersenLecturer in ecology, philosophy and the history of ideas,Nansenskolen- The Humanistic Accademy of Norway -

Science books can be tricky. Even the most informative book written by an incredible scientist can be a hard read, and you might find yourself having trouble at understanding what you read just because the writing was poor. It's one thing to be a good scientist, another thing to be a good writer. This book was so beautifully-written that halfway in the book I googled Virginia Morell to get to know her better. I was not surprised at all to see she had a degree in English Literature.There are quite a few books out there on each and every animal told in this book. If you have read them, you might not want to read this one. I've been interested in animals and reading books about them for quite some time now, thus already knew half of the things I read in Animal Wise. Animal Wise does not go into too much details. I mean, the book is 300something pages long and it covers multiple animals. It would be, however, a fantastic choice if you don't want to get into too much details anyway, or if you are looking for a 'beginner' book. It's easy to understand, very well-written, and has some fascinating information.The only reason I'm giving 4 stars instead of 5 (and probably being unfair by doing so) is that there has been three or four times when I found myself saying, "No, just don't end it here! It's getting too interesting!"

This book is a detailed description of the science that has developed to see what and how animals think and feel. The experiments described are very clever and bring amazing results. There is no question that after reading this human beings should realise that this planet does not belong just to people, but to every living thing on it. Animals have feelings too!

Virginia Morell is well known in the world of animals intelligence and love. She made an exellent book to every one which is concern about animals wisdom. Morell have shown us again a well-known specific animals who show us how much little about them we know as Sentient-Beings. For example, Border Coolies such as Rico and others are only few of them, as well as Grey Parrots, Greater Apes, Elephants and so on. Thank's Virginia for a lovely book!

Love the way it is written - I can choose whichever animal and read up on them and the author included the human interest and interaction - not full of scientific jargon.I have purchased it for a gift for other people who like animals but kept my own copy - I like to pick it up now and then and refresh my memory.

Amazing book, I am not only animal lover but also behaviorist. I love the way this book is written. Full of scientfic details but good eand easy for everybody to read. Morell shows the world of animal mind as the paralel to ours, human one. No better nor worse, different but full of wisdom.