Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? Audiobook (Free)

From world-renowned biologist and primatologist Frans de Waal comes this groundbreaking work on animal intelligence destined to become a classic.

What separates your brain from an animal’s? Perhaps you believe it’s your capability to style tools, your feeling of self, or your grasp of previous and potential?all traits that have helped us define ourselves as the planet’s preeminent species. But in recent decades, these statements have been eroded-or also disproved outright-by a trend in the study of animal about Are We Wise Enough to learn How Smart Animals Are? cognition.

Take just how octopuses make use of coconut shells as tools; elephants that classify human beings by age, gender, and vocabulary; or Ayumu, the young man chimpanzee at Kyoto University or college whose flash storage places that of human beings to shame. Based on analysis including crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, whales, and of course chimpanzees and bonobos, Frans de Waal explores both scope as well as the depth of animal intelligence. He presents a firsthand account of how research provides stood traditional behaviorism on its mind by uncovering how smart pets really are-and how we’ve underestimated their skills for too much time.

People often assume a cognitive ladder, from decrease to higher forms, with this own intelligence at the very top. But what if it is similar to a bush, with cognition taking different, often incomparable, forms? Can you presume yourself dumber than a squirrel because you’re less adept at recalling the places of hundreds of buried acorns? Or would you judge your notion of your surroundings as more sophisticated than that of a echolocating bat?

De Waal evaluations the rise and fall of the mechanistic view of pets and starts our minds to the theory that animal thoughts are more intricate and organic than we have assumed. De Waal’s landmark work will convince you to rethink everything you thought you understood about animal?and human?cleverness.