Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

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.

ISBN-13: 9780393353662

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Norton - W. W. & Company - Inc.

Publication Date: 04-04-2017

Pages: 352

Product Dimensions: 5.50(w) x 7.40(h) x 1.00(d)

Frans de Waal, author of Mama's Last Hug, is C. H. Candler Professor Emeritus of Primate Behavior at Emory University and the former director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

1 Magic Wells 7

2 A Tale of Two Schools 29

3 Cognitive Ripples 63

4 Talk to Me 95

5 The Measure of All Things 119

6 Social Skills 165

7 Time Will Tell 205

8 Of Mirrors and Jars 235

9 Evolutionary Cognition 265

Notes 277

Bibliography 291

Glossary 319

Acknowledgments 323

Index 325