Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Succinctly written and sumptuously illustrated with photographs and diagrams, this appealing book is sure to fascinate the general reader and inspire the science student considering a career in animal behavior or cognition.
--Library Journal (starred review)
This compelling book is from a world authority in animal intelligence and brings together the cumulative research relating to non-human -smart- species. It reveals how intelligent animals communicate, how they learn behavior, how they show feelings and emotions -- and for some species, how they use tools, count, and pick up a foreign language
Fully illustrated with photographs and step-by-step graphics, and drawing on data from historical and current experiments and observations, the book examines intelligence in the great apes (gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans), monkeys, and a surprisingly long list of non-primate species: sea otters, eagles, elephants, dolphins, lions, whales, parrots, honeybees, beetles, rats, woodpeckers, crows, and dogs.
The book's chapters are:
- Comparing Animal Skills and Intelligence -- with each other and with humans
- Animal Tool Use -- in nature, in captivity, environmental adaptation
- Communication in Animals -- language, intention, meaning, alarms
- Imitation and Social Learning -- culture, observational learning
- Social Cognition and Emotion -- cooperation, altruism, empathy, deception
- Self-recognition and Awareness -- consciousness, mirror self-recognition
- Numerical Abilities in Animals -- counting, uses of quantity
- Animals and Human Non-verbal Language -- sign language, shapes, graphic symbols.
This new edition's updates reflect the massive surge in research on animal cognitiion in the last 3 years -- in companion dogs, birds, insects, stingrays and mongooses.