Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?
Frans de Waal
Narrated By: Sean Runnette
Duration: 10 hours and 35 minutes
What to expect
From world-renowned biologist and primatologist Frans de Waal comes this groundbreaking work on animal intelligence destined to become a classic.
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 been eroded—or even disproved 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, often incomparable, forms? 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.
Genre
Zoology and animal sciences, Wildlife: general interest
Listen to a sample
“De Waal…challenges us to accept the ultimate findings of this research: Our mental skills are the product of evolution, and all animals from spiders to octopuses to ravens and apes are thinkers in their own ways.”
“De Waal’s astonishing study of animal intelligence has the makings of a classic—and is one fascinating read.”
“Engaging and informative.”
“Not only full of information and thought provoking, it’s also a lot of fun to read.”
“A passionate and convincing case for the sophistication of nonhuman minds.”
“A beautifully written and delightfully conceived popular science book.”
“Thoroughly engaging, remarkably informative, and deeply insightful.”
“The clarity of his writing makes for a highly readable book.”
“Sean Runnette narrates with a scholarly voice, at times waxing philosophical…The stories of honey badgers who escape captivity, dolphins who work with fishermen, and parrots who actually converse are fascinating.”