Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

From world-renowned biologist Frans de Waal, a groundbreaking work which challenges everything we think we know about animal intelligence. ‘A remarkable book by a remarkable scientist’ Edward O Wilson author of The Social Conquest of EarthWhat separates your mind from the mind of an animal? 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 pre-eminent species on Earth. But in recent decades, claims of human superiority have been eroded by a revolution in the study of animal cognition.
Take the way octopuses use coconut shells as tools, or how elephants can classify humans by age, gender, and language. Take Ayumu, the young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University who demonstrates his species’ exceptional photographic memory. Based on research on animals including crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, whales, chimpanzees and bonobos, Frans de Waal reveals the scope and depth of animal intelligence, explaining how we have grossly underestimated non-human brains.
With astonishing stories of animal cognition, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? challenges everything you thought you knew about animal – and human – intelligence. ‘A lively, punchy and rigorous review of 20 years of academic studies of animals’ mental lives, written by one of the most prominent thinkers in the field… an important corrective to human exceptionalism’ Sunday Times