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Frans De Waal

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Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? Illustrated Edition, Kindle Edition

by Frans de Waal (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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A New York Times bestseller: "A passionate and convincing case for the sophistication of nonhuman minds." —Alison Gopnik, The Atlantic

Hailed as a classic, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? explores the oddities and complexities of animal cognition—in crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, chimpanzees, and bonobos—to reveal how smart animals really are, and how we’ve underestimated their abilities for too long. Did you know that octopuses use coconut shells as tools, that elephants classify humans by gender and language, and that there is a young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University whose flash memory puts that of humans to shame? Fascinating, entertaining, and deeply informed, de Waal’s landmark work will convince you to rethink everything you thought you knew about animal—and human—intelligence.

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978-0393353662
Edition

Illustrated
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On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company
Publication date

April 25 2016
Language

English
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8927 KB
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Product description

About the Author

Frans de Waal has been named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People. The author of Our Inner Ape, among many other works, he is the C. H. Candler Professor in Emory University’s Psychology Department and director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Review

“A good book. Read it instead of watching TV or playing video games. The whole world will be better as a result.” (Maria Rodale - Daily Beast)^“When I was growing up, aspiring naturalists or behavioral scientists would be given a copy of Konrad Lorenz’s zoological investigation King Solomon’s Ring to inspire them. With its wide-ranging and thought-provoking content, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? is an appropriate 21st-century replacement. If you are at all interested in what it is to be an animal, human or otherwise, you should read this book.” (Matthew Cobb - The Guardian)^“An entertaining, convincing case for assessing each species’s intelligence on its own terms….not only full of information and thought-provoking, it’s also a lot of fun to read.” (Nancy Szokan - The Washington Post)^“Astonishing...has the makings of a classic--and one fantastic read.” (People)^“A passionate and convincing case for the sophistication of nonhuman minds.” (Alison Gopnik - The Atlantic)^“A thoughtful and easy read, packed with information stemming from detailed empirical research, and one of de Waal's most comparative works that goes well beyond the world of nonhuman primates with whom he's most familiar.” (Marc Bekoff - Psychology Today)^“Engaging and informative.” (The New York Times)^“A beautifully written and delightfully conceived popular science book, written by an eminent researcher who has dedicated his career to making the general public aware of just how smart animals are.” (Nicola Clayton - Science)^“Walks us through research revealing what a ride range of animal species are actually capable of....it all deals a pretty fierce wallop to our sense of specialness.” (Jon Mooallem - New York Times Book Review)^“A fascinating history of the study of animal behavior and cognition.” (Bark)^“This is a remarkable book by a remarkable scientist. Drawing on a growing body of research including his own, de Waal shows that animals, from elephants and chimpanzees to the lowly invertebrates, are not only smarter than we thought, but also engaged in forms of thought we have only begun to understand.” (Edward O. Wilson, University Professor Emeritus, Harvard University)^“Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? will completely change your perceptions of the abilities of animals. This book takes the reader on a fascinating journey of discovery into the world of animal problem-solving.” (Temple Grandin, author of Animals in Translation and Animals Make Us Human) --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B016APOCRA
Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; Illustrated edition (April 25 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 8927 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 353 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #113,541 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #8 in Animal Psychology
- #22 in Zoology eBooks
- #23 in Zoologoy

Customer Reviews:
4.5 1,702 ratings

About the author

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Frans De Waal

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I am a Dutch/American biologist, born in 1948 in Den Bosch, the Netherlands. I have lived in the USA since 1981.

My passion is primate behavior, and the comparison between primate and human behavior. I pursue the first as a scientist and the second as the author of popular science books. For me, there is nothing more logical than to look at human society through the lens of animal behavior. I have a Ph. D. in biology and ethology (the study of animal behavior) from the University of Utrecht.

My first book, "Chimpanzee Politics" (1982), compared the schmoozing and scheming of chimpanzees involved in power struggles with that of human politicians. The book was put on the reading list of congress in Washington. Ever since, I have drawn parallels between primate and human behavior, from aggression to morality and culture.

Gender differences are a logical subject for a primatologist since the gender debate always turns around. the interaction between nature and nurture. Despite attempts to separate gender from biology, as if it were purely a human construct, the reason we have a gender duality is that our species has two sexes to begin with. I agree that the sexual binary is a mere approximation (even at the biological level, it has exceptions and intermediates), but still, the way the sexes differ in other primates tells us something about ourselves.

My latest book "Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist" (Norton, 2022) compares sex differences in three closely related species: humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos. It tries to dispel the idea that only humans have genders and that only we have gender diversity. Other primates, too, adopt sex-typical behavior from watching others, hence have genders. They show the same array of gender expressions celebrated under the LGBTQ flag. My book pays attention to non-conforming individuals as well as homosexual behavior among the primates.

Since childhood, I have been an animal lover, and in fact -- even though my career has focused on primate behavior -- I am interested in all sorts of animals, including fish and birds, but also elephants and dolphins. My book on animal intelligence -- "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?" (Norton, 2016) -- reflects this broader interest, as it covers a wide range of species.

My wife, Catherine, and I live in a forested area near Smoke Rise, in Georgia, a state we love. I retired from my position at Emory University in 2019, right before the Covid crisis. I am still involved in primate studies, mainly at sanctuaries for great apes in Africa, but mostly devote my time to reading, writing, and touring to give lectures.

I am a member of the National Academy of Sciences as well as of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2007, Time declared me one of The Worlds’ 100 Most Influential People Today.

My books have been translated into over twenty languages, appeared on the New York Times bestseller list, and received awards, such as:

• The 2020 PEN / E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award for "Mama’s Last Hug"

• The 1989 Los Angeles Times Book Award for "Peacemaking among Primates"

More on my background on the following website:

https://www.emory.edu/LIVING_LINKS/bonobo_atheist/author1.shtml

My public Facebook page with 750K followers announces upcoming lectures:

https://www.facebook.com/franspublic/

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Top reviews from Canada

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Bill Rayner

Good and Not So Good

Reviewed in Canada on May 20, 2021

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This is a fairly good book. Maybe the Frans de Waal didn't write it for people like me, so I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt and 4 stars. The good thing about the book is that it includes many anecdotes about how animals of various types have demonstrated their mental abilities in experiments and in observations in the wild - chimpanzees, other apes and primates, birds, dolphins, elephants, and more. The down side is that de Wall can't resist doing what professors and researchers love to do - knock the theories and conclusions of other professors and researchers, most of whom predated de Waal's generation. This is probably a decent book for someone who wants to be a professor or researcher in animal cognition, and who cares about alternative academic perspectives. Myself, I learned enough about the misguided professors who preceded de Waal in the first few pages, and I didn't need it hammered into me throughout the book. I didn't even bother to read the last four pages because it was more of the same. And what de Wall was proposing makes perfect sense to me - what was the point of continuing to try to convince the reader that the outdated behaviorist approach is wrong as compared to the modern evolutionary cognitive approach.

Wouldn't it have been great if 95% of this 340-page book had been devoted to the animals and their stories. Still I did enjoy what anecdotes de Wall put into the book, and it's inspired me to learn more.

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docrankin

been observed to rise early to get to a good fruit tree and beat the rush of other diners

Reviewed in Canada on August 1, 2016

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What little animal behaviour I studied was in the late 60s. A time when "anthropomorphism" was a 4(squared!) letter word. Mammals were reflexive robots. There was no feelings, no past or future, just instictive drives that pushed them to hunt, eat, seek mates etc. Frans De Waal and his primatology colleagues have shown, clearly, that it is a lot more complicated than that, especially in our primates cousins. Higher mammals seem to plan for the future, they can be altruistic and share, they "feel", they can cooperate in problem solving and use simple tools. No, they are not human, but neither are they "reflexive robots". The book delves into the problem of trying to assess animal "intelligence" and it is surprisingly difficult. Much of the science involves observation and it is hard to scientifically "prove" things with statistics, probabilities and all the hallmarks of objective research - although De Waal and co. have done just that on a number of occasions. Wild chimpanzees have, for example, been observed to rise early to get to a good fruit tree and beat the rush of other diners. They will even get up extra early, (way earlier than "normal", which is usually a relaxed mid morning affair!). to make a 2 - 3 hour "commute" to a distant tree - it's as though someone has "set the alarm" to get them up and going! A very interesting and thought provoking book, which I highly recommend.

7 people found this helpful

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Ryan

A Fascinating Read

Reviewed in Canada on October 12, 2020

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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.

One person found this helpful

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B.Wane

Very interesting

Reviewed in Canada on December 28, 2020

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I liked what he had to say, but it was like rereading my university textbooks in anthropology.
Excellent information, lots of personal reflections and data, really extremely thorough.

Not a quick or an easy read, but very worthwhile

One person found this helpful

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Terry Trowbridge

good gift AND good scholarship

Reviewed in Canada on June 15, 2016

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What a relief, and an excellent book. Scientific analyses of non-human intelligence are almost always dismal failures of the scientific imagination. Not so with de Waal. He treats his subjects - animals humans, and scientific research methods - with critical and methodological rigor. If you are a casual reader who just wants a cool book about animals and science, this will do the trick. His writing is easy to read and flows quickly. This book could make a good birthday present for a smart teenager, or a thoughtful adult friend who likes animal videos on YouTube. Do you like Oliver Sacks or Carl Sagan? Buy this book.

6 people found this helpful

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Peter R. Smith

Human Stupidity v. Animal Intelligence

Reviewed in Canada on September 4, 2016

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As soon as we stop trying to prove how much smarter we are, we start to see how smart animals are. This book is as much a testimony to human pomposity and stupidity as it is to animal intelligence. We are starting to see animals as they truly are, but now we face a bigger test. If they are that smart and that feeling, how can we continue treating them so abysmally and how can we continue eating them. It's us that need to have our heads read, not them!

7 people found this helpful

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SMiller

Great book

Reviewed in Canada on October 6, 2020

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Great book so far and came in perfect condition. Saved me lots of $$ because I didn’t have to buy it at my university bookstore!

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Connie deRoche

Another winner from a veteran scholar of human and non-human animal behavior.

Reviewed in Canada on December 11, 2016

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I've read many of deWaal's books, and they are always engaging and clearly written. The author offers carefully considered scholarship. He is a biologist and evolutionist, but one who never offers simplistic specious, post-facto evolutionary explanations of so-called human nature. DeWaal's a mind-opener. This volume adds new material to the substantial corpus of work he has produced over the years.

3 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Richard Reese (author of Understanding Sustainability)

Are We Too Smart to Remain on Earth?

Reviewed in the United States on August 20, 2016

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Primatologist Frans de Waal has made a career out of pounding his head against the rugged wall of human exceptionalism — the belief that humans are the only species that is conscious, self-aware, rational, cooperative, goal-oriented, empathetic, and so on. This wall of calcified grandiosity has resisted change for a long time, and has inspired an abusive relationship with the rest of the family of life. With his new book, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, de Waal has launched a new assault on the cult of exceptionalism.

In the 1970s, when de Waal was in college, behavioral psychology was the hot trend. It asserted that animals were mindless, machine-like organisms that did nothing more than robotically respond to stimuli with responses. Animals were incapable of cognition — knowing based on perception and judgment. They could not have desires or intentions. Many scholars remain reluctant to consider the possibility that animals possess various forms of intelligence. Whoops, I meant non-human animals. In our culture, the two categories of fauna are humans and animals (not wombats and non-wombats).

In the last 20 years, new research has been inspiring doubt in many long-held beliefs, including the notion that rationality is exclusively human. Yet “animal cognition” is still an obscene four-letter word, a diabolical heresy. Smart scholars wait until they have tenure before they come out of the closet and study it.

The illusion of exceptionalism has deep roots. By the time children reach the age of 8 or 10, their worldviews are largely solidified for the rest of their lives. The culture constantly reinforces this worldview, and only a few can summon the power to question it. So, youngsters absorb the worldview, grow up, and raise their children with it, generation after generation. Entrenched belief is immune to conflicting evidence.

Humans are extremely proud of our complex language and abstract thought, but these are just two tools in a big box of mental functions used by animals. De Waal believes that some species use forms of intelligence that we are still unaware of — intelligence beyond our imagination. The absolute bottom line for any species is basic survival, and ants and termites excel at this. No animal needs alphabets, numbers, or glowing screens.

Irene Pepperberg had a parrot named Alex, who was remarkably capable of advanced cognition. When she pointed at a key, Alex said “key.” He pronounced words precisely. He could add numbers. Alex didn’t just memorize names, he could listen to questions, think, and answer correctly. He was asked, “What color is corn?” when no corn was present. “Yellow,” he replied.

Other birds are also extremely smart. “The Clark’s nutcracker, in the fall, stores more than twenty thousand pine nuts, in hundreds of different locations distributed over many square miles; then in winter and spring it manages to recover the majority of them.” Could you do that?

Crows, jays, magpies, and ravens are corvids, “a family that has begun to challenge the cognitive supremacy of primates.” One biologist caught and banded many crows, which really pissed them off. They recognized him wherever he went, and they regularly scolded and dive-bombed him.

Ayumu the chimp was trained to use a touchscreen. On the screen, a number appeared for a quarter second, then another, in a rapid sequence. Ayumu could remember the sequence of numbers, and then tap them in the correct order. Without practice, he was far better than any human at memory tests — even a memory expert who could remember the sequence of cards in a deck. Harrumph! The supremacists soiled their britches and muttered obscenities. Eventually, a frantic researcher practiced, practiced, and practiced and was finally able to score as well as a chimpanzee.

In Japan, chimps were taught a computer game, similar to rock-paper-scissors, which required them to anticipate their opponent’s choices. “The chimps outperformed the humans, reaching optimal performance more quickly and completely than members of our own species.”

Like many social animals, primates excel at imitation and conformity, which can have great survival value. Youngsters note what their mothers eat, and what they avoid. Chimps readily imitate the behavior of high status chimps, but not low status ones. When apes are raised in a human home, they are as good at imitating humans as children are. They “spontaneously learn to brush their teeth, ride bicycles, light fires, drive golf carts, eat with a knife and fork, peel potatoes, and mop the floor.”

Humans are pathological conformists, abandoning personal preferences when they conflict with the current whims of the majority, whims that are typically manufactured by a slimy mob of marketing shysters. When a celebrity dyes her hair pink, her fans do too. Respectable people must travel everywhere in gas guzzling motorized wheelchairs — bicyclists, bus riders, and walkers are low status slugs. Mindless imitation is the life force of consumer society, and the death force of Earth’s biosphere.

When de Waal gives a talk on primate intelligence, he is frequently asked, “What sets humans apart?” Consider an iceberg, he responds. Almost all of it is submerged, only a wee tip is visible above the surface. We have many cognitive, emotional, and behavioral similarities with our primate relatives, and a few dozen differences — the tip. Academia focuses most attention on the tip alone. “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the smartest of them all?”

Animal intelligence books annoy me. Why do we need scientists to inform us that animals are not robots? Wild people, and others who live close to nature, never doubt the powerful intelligence of deer, ravens, foxes, and weasels. I know outdoor living. I have watched healthy wild animals survive long frigid winters without tools, fire, or clothing — a way of life that would promptly kill me.

We are like fish out of water, space aliens. The best way to discover the intelligence and coherence of the family of life is to abandon our climate-controlled cubicles and go back home to the wild. But there are way too many of us. Books and videos cannot substitute for fulltime direct experience. It’s no fun being a space alien. The Koyukon tell us “Every animal knows way more than you do.” A shaman once told Knud Rasmussen “True wisdom is only to be found far away from people, out in the great solitude.”

De Waal’s book jabbers a lot about experiments done in zoos and research centers, on enslaved animals. I’m not a fan of animal imprisonment. I’m a fan of wildness and freedom. The ancestors of chimps and bonobos have lived in the same place for millions of years without trashing it — a demonstration of profound intelligence. Send the researchers to the rainforest, so we can learn from our brilliant relatives, and rigorously question our entrenched beliefs.

There is an enormous quirk in this book. The core premise is that humans are a highly intelligent species, and that the other animals are not as dumb as we think. Are ants seriously destabilizing the climate? Are termites acidifying the oceans? Are chimps sending billions of tons of topsoil into the sea? In this discourse on animal intelligence, the fact that human animals are knowingly bludgeoning the planet is never once acknowledged.

De Waal says, “Cognition is the mental transformation of sensory input into knowledge about the environment and the successful application of this knowledge.” Cognition is about the process of acquiring and applying knowledge. “Intelligence refers more to the ability to do it successfully.” Among the propeller heads of science, “success” includes the bad juju of overpopulation, overshoot, and overconsumption. My definition of success requires long-term ecological sustainability.

22 people found this helpful

Book Shark

Insightful

Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2016

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Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? By Frans de Waal

“Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?” is an insightful look at animal intelligence backed up by evidence from controlled experiments. Dutch/American biologist with a Ph.D. in zoology and ethology and author of Our Inner Ape and others, Frans de Waal, takes the reader on a journey of the sophistication of nonhuman minds. This entertaining 352-page book includes the following nine chapters: 1. Magic Wells, 2. A Tale of Two Schools, 3. Cognitive Ripples, 4. Talk to Me, 5. The Measure of all Things, 6. Social Skills, 7. Time Will Tell, 8. Of Mirrors and Jars, and 9. Evolutionary Cognition.

Positives:
1. Engaging and well-written book that is accessible to the masses.
2. A fascinating topic in the hands of a subject matter expert, nonhuman cognition.
3. Entertaining and insightful. The book is easy to follow. Professor de Waal is fair and even handed. He is careful to not oversell nonhuman cognition while providing a mixture of stories, experiments and observations to back his points. “I will pick and choose from among many discoveries, species, and scientists, so as to convey the excitement of the past twenty years.”
4. Includes many sketches that complement the excellent narrative.
5. Introduces and explains key new terms. “Umwelt stresses an organism’s self-centered, subjective world, which represents only a small tranche of all available worlds.”
6. Does a wonderful job of explaining the most important topic of this book, animal cognition. “No wonder Griffin became an early champion of animal cognition—a term considered an oxymoron until well into the 1980s—because what else is cognition but information processing? Cognition is the mental transformation of sensory input into knowledge about the environment and the flexible application of this knowledge.” “While the term cognition refers to the process of doing this, intelligence refers more to the ability to do it successfully.”
7. A look into experimental science. “The credo of experimental science remains that an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
8. One of the recurring themes of this wonderful book is the importance of conducting well-constructed experiments. “Their earlier poor performance had had more to do with the way they were tested than with their mental powers.” “The challenge is to find tests that fit an animal’s temperament, interests, anatomy, and sensory capacities.”
9. A fascinating look at the field of evolutionary cognition. “The field of evolutionary cognition requires us to consider every species in full.”
10. One of the most important topics covered is the notion of continuity. “It is far more logical to assume continuity in every domain, Griffin said, echoing Charles Darwin’s well-known observation that the mental difference between humans and other animals is one of degree rather than kind.”
11. Explains key differences between behaviorism and ethology. “The difference between behaviorism and ethology has always been one of human-controlled versus natural behavior. Behaviorists sought to dictate behavior by placing animals in barren environments in which they could do little else than what the experimenter wanted.”
12. The book provides interesting examples that includes animals beyond de Waal’s expertise of primates. “With animals such as chimpanzees, elephants, and crows, for which we have ample evidence of complex cognition, we really do not need to start at zero every time we are struck by seemingly smart behavior.”
13. Provocative questions. Do animals have culture? Find out.
14. Provides evidence for animal cognition. “A century ago Wolfgang Köhler set the stage for animal cognition research by demonstrating that apes can solve problems in their heads by means of a flash of insight, before enacting the solution.” “Apes do not just search for tools for specific occasions; they actually fabricate them.”
15. The pioneers of animal cognition. “Nadia Ladygina-Kohts was a pioneer in animal cognition, who studied not only primates but also parrots, such as this macaw. Working in Moscow at around the same time that Köhler conducted his research, she remains far less known.”
16. The amazing story of Ayumu. “Ayumu’s photographic memory allows him to quickly tap a series of numbers on a touchscreen in the right order, even though the numbers disappear in the blink of an eye. That humans cannot keep up with this young ape has upset some psychologists.”
17. An interesting look at social skills. “The cooperative pulling paradigm, as it is known, has been applied to monkeys, hyenas, parrots, rooks, elephants, and so on.” “In the end, we found proof in the pudding that chimpanzees are highly cooperative. They have no trouble whatsoever regulating and dampening strife for the sake of achieving shared outcomes.”
18. Do animals plan ahead? “This study was quite ingenious and included a few additional controls, leading the authors to conclude that jays recall what items they have put where and at what point in time.” “Lisala, a bonobo, carries a heavy rock on a long trek toward a place where she knows there are nuts. After collecting the nuts, she continues her trek to the only large slab of rock in the area, where she employs her rock as a hammer to crack the nuts. Picking up a tool so long in advance suggests planning.”
19. The intelligence of elephants. “In short, elephants make sophisticated distinctions regarding potential enemies to the point that they classify our own species based on language, age, and gender. How they do so is not entirely clear, but studies like these are beginning to scratch the surface of one of the most enigmatic minds on the planet.”
20. The three divided attitudes on animal cognition: slayers, skeptics, and the proponents.
21. Notes and bibliography included.

Negatives:
1. The scientific process needed to be explained in more detail and specifically how it relates to the study of primates. An appendix explaining de Waal’s overall scientific approach would have been helpful.
2. Lacks supplementary visual materials such as diagrams, charts and graphs. A chart depicting the different types of primates with key statistics as an example. Maps showing where the main subjects come from.
3. On the topic of neuroscience a little more depth was warranted. Once again, visual material would have complemented the narrative.
4. The format could have been enhanced to highlight the most noteworthy observations or facts.

In summary, this was a very entertaining book. Professor De Waal succeeds in entertaining and educating the public on animal cognition. His mastery of the topic is admirable and is careful to be grounded on the facts and not to oversell an idea. A lot of interesting insights don’t miss this one. I recommend it!

Further recommendations: “The Bonobo and the Atheist”, “Our Inner Ape”, “The Age of Empathy”, “Chimpanzee Politics” by the same author, “The Genius of Birds” by Jennifer Ackerman, “Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel” by Carl Safina, “The Soul of an Octopus” by Sy Montgomery, “Animal Wise” by Virginia Morell, “Zoobiquity” by Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, “The Secret Lives of Bats” by Merlin Tuttle, and “Last Ape Standing” by Chip Walter.

185 people found this helpful

smita krishnan

Good book to read

Reviewed in India on September 4, 2023

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I bought the book as a gift for someone.

chris

decent

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 1, 2023

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arrived quickly v good condition - wouldnt know it was pre-owned

Shelley Isom

It's pigeons all the way up

Reviewed in the United States on December 22, 2017

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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 ...

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Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? Illustrated Edition, Kindle Edition

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