Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

Das Buch wirft anhand zahlreicher spannender Beispiele einen umfassenden Blick auf faszinierende und mannigfaltige kognitive Fähigkeiten im Tierreich, von Insekten bis Säugetieren. Es widmet sich zudem intensiv der Frage nach der Definition von Intelligenz - nicht zuletzt vor dem Hintergrund unser eigenen geistigen Fähigkeiten.

Frans De Waal shows to us that humans are not unique like many people think. With a lot of science experiments, he brings plenty cases of animal cognition. Primates, corvids, canines, parrots, elephants, parrots, and so on, they are all species that share with us some habilites that we thought that was only ours. They can plan ahead, use tools, they know what others know and they have political structures. De Waal also explains that science needs to focus on a different methodology, not the behaviorism. The field of animal cognition is growing so fast. I’m excited to hear about what scientists will discover soon. Great read, so worth!

I bought the book as a gift for someone.

This is a fascinating book detailing important discoveries in the field of ethology. The book also spends some time exploring the history of the field - from a time when humans believed that all the other animals were mindless "stimulus-response robots" to now.The book largely focuses on primates, especially chimps, as this is author Franz de Waal's personal field of study, but also features the cognitive abilities of crows, elephants, octopuses, dogs, and rats, amongst others creatures.Other interesting bits of note include how people commonly abuse the concept of anthropomorphism, and explains how the belief in the evolution of the human body but not the mind is in itself a form of Creationism.This book is a must-read if you're interested in learning what we know about how animals think, feel, and experience the world.

Reading this book was so refreshing as I am getting more and more disenchanted with science based on mechanistic views. It reminded me of my observations of a pigeon. I was working in downtown San Francisco in a complex of skyscrapers called The Embarcadero. There were large numbers of pigeons there and flocks swooped around these buildings patrolling for food. In my bldg. on the ground floor was a bakery which I passed every day. I began to notice that collected near the bakery were lots of infirm, sickly pigeons, I guessed they went there because they were likely to score donut crumbs from bakery customers. Then I began noticing that a female pigeon was there with her half grown fledged offspring. The offspring had no feet, just short stubs. She could lift off into flight with a certain amount of effort and she landed on her stomach. Then I noticed after awhile that the mother was gone but the young legless pigeon showed up there every day. Before long I was bringing this pigeon sunflower seeds and feeding her when I left the bldg. It was against the law to feed pigeons and so I had to go to different levels or spots where I was less likely to run into the law. Once this pigeon knew that I was a reliable bringer of sun flower seeds I saw her every day. I also attracted lots of other pigeon who had two legs and would muscle in, so I had to give her (I just knew she was a female pigeon) her stash in such a way that the other pigeons wouldn’t mob her and out-eat her, which meant that I encouraged the pigeon to trust me enough to come closer than the others, which she did. This was a routine for me for several months. Sometimes to avoid building guards I had to change levels. The pigeon would always find me even though downtown SF is a very busy place, with thousands of people travelling through. I would come out of my bldg. and look up and every time this no-leg pigeon would come lofting down from on high. She knew the hour I was likely to show up – 6 p.m. Then I lost my job there. Three months after I had left the job, I came to downtown SF to meet someone at my old bldg. Just in case I brought sun flower seeds not really expecting the pigeon to show up. But there she was as if I’d never gone, and I fed her the sun flower seeds. How amazing that she could recognize and remember one person out of thousands and be on the look out for me! 3 months later, I came again to meet a co-worker. I brought sun flower seeds but I never expected to see her again. Wrong! She lofted down and landed near my feet. Since that experience, I bridle whenever I hear people saying pigeons are stupid. I have since decided that everything is conscious, including the planet and the plants and every living thing on it. Brains are mechanical, consciousness is not ...