This is a book many of us have been waiting decades for. A respected science writer pulls together a report on a wide range of experimental work on animal cognition, organized in an engaging way, focused on unassailable scientific work, and presented in a personal, conversational style that makes for easy reading.
That said, let's look at some of the silliness in the low-star reviews.
First and foremost, there are the "Oh, ick, it's all about science! How boring!" and the "This isn't science because it doesn't agree with my world view" crowd. To you both, I suggest growing up. Science is a discipline that attempts to make us more informed and better able to understand the world. It requires being able to examine your "world view" and weigh evidence rather than ignore what you don't want to hear. And yes, it's more work than watching Honey Boo-Boo or reading the latest from the James Patterson factory.
The claim that this "isn't science" is laughable, even from a cursory glance at the content. Each chapter is focused on a rigorous scientific discipline, usually following a specific experiment through from query to observation and conclusion. The discipline may be the forensic ethology of studying dolphins or elephants in the wild or the clinical lab work, sometimes invasive, on rats and ants, or even a blending of the two, as in the fascinating chapter on parrots. But it's science, which is not a religion and not subject to satisfying your sense of self-importance. As has been noted, the Earth revolves around the Sun, not around you.
I have a bit more sympathy for the "Just leave the poor aminals alooone!" crowd, because I find lab work and invasive experiments unpleasant. I'm even troubled (as is Morell) by things like disturbing elephant herds by playing recordings of dead relatives. But a fact that needs to be faced is that the trajectory of human history is destroying species at a catastrophic rate, and our carnage is justified by a willful ignorance about the personhood of other animals, a blithe, self-serving assumption (like the one about blacks that drove slavery or the ones about Jews that promoted the Holocaust) that they are unworthy of survival. If the suffering of a few more -- yes, thousands more -- animals can turn that around, then the Utilitarian argument applies. And the sentimentalists need to grasp that lab animals and zoo captives not only exist, but they only exist because they are lab animals and zoo captives. A chimpanzee who has been born and raised in a cage can either be made comfortable or set free to die in an environment she is no more prepared to cope with than you are. Most lab rats are one hundred generations or more from their "free" forebears. If those lab rats can be proven to have a sense of humor, a sense of self, the ability to plan, what we loosely call "a mind," then perhaps our country will legally recognize them as "animals" with a right to decent treatment. (Rats and mice are excluded explicitly from the definition of "animal" in federal animal welfare law.)
Finally, Morell herself addresses the "I don't care what you found. Animals don't think" crowd. Rather poignantly in her epilogue she reports that readers of her manuscript asked her how, after recounting all these examples of animal cognition, she was going to "explain our difference." The issue had come up throughout the book. The ant researcher who proved that ant behaviors fit the scientific behaviorist definition of "teaching," only to have the scientific community change the definition so they couldn't. The chimpanzee researcher reporting the irate email he got from a colleague saying that "with practice," he could do what one of the chimps did just as well as the chimp. "The chimp didn't need practice," the researcher remarks wrily. In the epilogue, Morell explains, to anyone that didn't get it, that she WASN'T going to "explain how we are different," because the whole point of the book is to explain how animals are NOT different, that we are all, plant, animal, and human, patterns in one fabric of evolution. To which I can only add, "Live with it."
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Reviews with images
Essential Knowledge for Morality
I'm torn between a four and five star rating. The topic is super important and her writing is accessible to a broad audience. What I struggle with is not understanding how, knowing that animals think and feel, she and anyone reading this or other research can continue to consume animal products. Subsidizing cruelty is awful, especially when done knowingly.
Top reviews from other countries
SK
Beautiful, thought provoking. Must read for all ages as background!!! We need to share this with our children!!!
Reviewed in Canada on December 3, 2015
Nadav Levy
... well known in the world of animals intelligence and love. She made an exellent book to every one ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 6, 2014katherine clausell
Para los que no somos cientificos
Reviewed in Spain on March 27, 2013
E.S.
Great choice for those who are not too familiar with these animals
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 24, 2015