Animal Wise

Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures is a non-fiction book on the subject of animal cognition and emotions by science writer Virginia Morell. The book was first published in 2013, and discusses the emotional and cognitive abilities of animals from octopi to earthworms, with a focus on dismantling the myth that animals react involuntarily or solely based on instinct. Morell uses years of experience in science writing to explore modern discoveries in animal research and the surprising world of how animals think.

Morell structures her book as a series of brief essays about a wide variety of animals. She reveals, for instance, that cows have regional dialects and accents, that fish feel pain, and that sheep have excellent facial recognition and memory. Though some of the animals that Morell focuses on are widely understood to be intelligent by the general public – dogs, for instance, as well as elephants, and monkeys – Morell also talks about the incredible intelligence of tiny or often ignored life forms, like ants, blue jays, and rats.

Central to Morell's research about the cognitive abilities of animals is the idea that comes from ancient scholars about the superiority of man compared to other animals. Since the days of Aristotle, men have understood themselves to be smartest and most capable of mammals, with higher intellect, emotional intelligence, and a number of other cognitive resources that maintain our superiority over other creatures. Morell reveals that Darwin was the first to question this idea that certain animals are naturally more capable than others. Darwin was the first to present the idea that animal behavior and understanding is reliant on environment, and was perhaps the first to become aware of the possibility that animals will develop similar skills and knowledge when they are provided the same resources and the same physical environment. This gave birth, of course, to the ideas of evolution and adaptation, which shape contemporary biology and animal science. However, in the 1920s behaviorists appeared – trained psychologists who believed that the only way to understand a being was to observe its actions – and again animals were relegated to essentially instinctual automatons, with no hope for emotional intelligence.



Of course, Morell then proceeds to turn this idea on its head with the stories she tells about animals. She writes on ants, who have such a complicated society and live in such a wide variety of shifting physical environments that they clearly have neurons that are flexible, rather than hard-wired. She also writes about birds and rats with a similar sense of awe. Birds, Morell reveals, sing because their parents teach them, and some songbirds practice singing in their sleep. Crows, known for being intelligent creatures, are able to improvise tools to solve problems. And parrots, who can imitate human speech and sound, aren't just blindly repeating us – they known what they are saying, and can even distinguish between some numbers, shapes, and colors. And rats, Morell writes, aren't just mindlessly feeding and scurrying. Researchers have discovered that rats emit sounds during play that demonstrate their pleasure and enjoyment of the activity they are undertaking.

In the final chapters, Morell moves into more complex and emotionally intelligent animals, like elephants and dolphins, who have long memories and elaborate and complicated social networks and relationships. These animals, Morell writes, are capable of feeling deep affection for one another and for human caretakers. She also writes about the many impressive cognitive feats of chimps, and finally saves the last chapter for the discussion of dogs. Some dogs, Morell reveals, have a vocabulary of up to one thousand words. Many scientists believe that because dogs are obsessed with understanding and completing our commands, they are integral to truly understanding the human mind.

Virginia Morell is an animal lover and science writer with many decades of experience contributing to magazines like National Geographic, Science, and The Smithsonian. Morell is also the author of a number of books, including Ancestral Passions, which was a New York Times Notable Book, Blue Nile, and Wildlife Wars. Morell's most recent book is called Becoming a Marine Biologist, and follows a modern marine biology team in their work in the field.