Came for the autism, stayed for the Labradors. Background: Temple Grandin is an animal behavior specialist. She's single-handedly revolutionized the humane treatment of slaughter animals in the United States. She's also a vital force in the neurodiversity movement. This book argues broadly that animal cognition shares some key features with autistic cognition – picture-thinking, working memory shortages, detail-fixation, etc. It also takes a fascinating tour through what we know about animal emotion, consciousness, and cognition.

Awesome, on multiple levels. The animal psychology wasn't just interesting (though it really is!) but also useful for those of us who handle a working dog. And also, Temple Grandin is one of those people who manages to make her life a sustained act of advocacy, which is something I aspire to on my very best days. This book spends some time explicitly explaining autistic cognition, but it more subtly is autistic in a way that just says, here's my brain. It's not like yours. Just so you know.

Grandin is a fine writer, with real insight into the lives of animals of all sorts. i enjoy all her books.

This was excellent. I'd heard of Temple Grandin a few times before in books on autism and behavioural science, and also remember seeing a documentary some years ago about her 'squeeze box' invention and how she works with the meat production sector in designing efficient slaughterhouses. Though this book also focussed on the subject of domestic pets (and I am not a dog fanatic in any sense) it never got sentimental or silly about it, and I hence found it very interesting and rewarding a book.

Grandin, and her co-author, focus partly on the ability of some autistic folk to understand animal behaviour better (and make use of this understanding), but this book is mainly about the behaviour, thought processes and motivations of domestic animals in general. Packed full of really interesting curiosities, very well researched whilst discussing a broad range of paradigms and cognitive experiments, and written in a very approachable manner, it was a very satisfying read. Yes, I could complain about feeling slightly distracted by the writing style and how some parts were obviously from the POV of the (self-admittedly slightly language restricted) Grandin, and others felt like they were definitely her co-author Catherine Johnson's words without any delineation, but this was a minor point in a majorly impressive book.

Animals in Translation by scientist Temple Grandin is a fascinating look at the complex question of how animals think, feel, and behave. From her own unique perspecitive as a person who has overcome autism, Grandin is able to understand animals so well that she is called on to manage animal behavior problems all around the country. Her book is thought provoking and loaded with personal stories from her vast experience with dogs, horses cows, pigs and chickens. She includes an excellent overveiw of contemporary neurological science views that help show how the brains of animals work, in comparison with humans. A perfect mix of storytelling and science, the book is entertaining and enlightening.

I totally loved this book, and found it almost impossible to prevent myself from reading sections out loud to my husband or anyone else who would listen. There are many fascinating anecdotes about both animals and autism, and for the most part the notes and bibliography allow one to follow up on some of the more striking stories.

Temple Grandin believes (and I admit, I also hold this believe pretty strongly) that animals must be met on their own terms -- it's not fair to treat animals like humans, and it causes us to miss things or do the animals disservice. At the same time, it's also a mistake to underestimate animal intelligence and the depths of animal experience.

I also deeply respect Grandin's work in making meat packing plants and feedlots more humane and less unnecessarily frightening. In particular, her discussion of commonsense ways that these plants can be inspected more efficiently and with better results presents an astonishingly simple and effective way to decrease accidents and animal suffering. I would have liked to have her address the meat and dairy industries in a little more depth, however. I'm not a vegetarian, but I do care about animals, and I would have liked to hear more about her feelings on whether certain methods of raising beef and dairy cattle lead to a less traumatic life for these animals. It's sort of a mistake in a lot of ways to ask whether raising a dairy cow one way or another is "more natural," since these animals have been domesticated for food production for thousands of years, but I would like to know whether she thinks grass fed animals lead better lives, etc.

One weird thing that other reviewers have mentioned is her conviction that albinism or even patches of unpigmented skin/white fur lead to ill health or behavioral problems. I've found some support for this in my own research; for example, Lethal White Syndrome is a genetic disorder that plagues white-coated offspring of "frame" patterned American Paint horses, and there are a lot of other cases of white-coated, blue-eyed animals having birth defects or genetic disorders. However, these seem to by and large be physical problems, rather than behavioral. Elsewhere in the book, Grandin discusses the problems that can occur when humans breed animals specifically for one characteristic (such as breeding collies for a narrower head, or selectively breeding for coloration), and it may be that what she is getting at is that breeding animals selectively to have white coats can cause other, unanticipated problems. Still, if that's the case, she's overstating it quite a bit here.

At any rate, this is a really fascinating book, and while I've spent a lot of time on a perceived flaw, it's really a pretty small part of the book. I highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in animals and how they think, and also to anyone who is interested in gaining insight into autism.

Temple Grandin sheds light on the similarities between the autistic person's brain function and that of animals. From her autistic perspective, she explains how she processes incoming information, how she adapts to unfamiliar situations and how she learns. She compares these brain functions to the science of animal intelligence and makes multiple connections between the two. She is not afraid to disagree with other scientists or previously-held beliefs and backs up her theories with strong scientific evidence. She truly has a different way of looking at animals and the reasons behind their actions and reactions.
Although I found the very technical science of brain function a little heavy at times, it was a gripping text, filled with real-life examples of animal communication, aggression, anxiety and fear. I found the chapter on animal language/communication especially fascinating. She gives an in-depth look at the ways that prairie dogs communicate different threats which I will not soon forget. I can see this kind of complex communication within my own small flock of chickens and believe whole-heartedly that they are sharing much more information than simply 'food' and 'danger'.
I listened to this as an audiobook and, although the narrator was mono-toned, I found it was a great way to float through the detailed research which may have bogged me down in a book.

"It's ironic that we always say autistic children are in their own little worlds, because if Dr. Snyder is right it's normal people who are living inside their heads. Autistic people are experiencing the actual world much more directly and accurately than normal people, with all their inattentional blindness and their change blindness." p. 300

Temple Grandin is a huge name in animal welfare. Or, she was. She contributed amazingly to the field, but this book is definitely a product of its time.

I couldn't finish it.

Some of the anecdotes were interesting, but a lot of the information itself was outdated. Dominance theory hasn't been taken seriously in the animal world for some years now and this was the main theory of her book. The parts about how animal brains work and how she related it to her experience as an autistic woman were really interesting, but after the chapters on how you have to show pigs and horses and dogs who's boss I'm left wondering how much of the rest of it is out of date and considered ridiculous in 2019 by brain...scientists? I wonder how much of it even Ms. Grandin would still stand by.

Even back when it was considered cutting edge, there were certain things that would have bothered me. She mashed personal opinion with scientific evidence with abandon. There was a lot of speculation, a lot of "No one has done any studies on this specifically, but I bet that..." which is not what I'm looking for in an educational read. I think that when you're writing from such a position of authority it's irresponsible to throw your opinion around like it's fact. It also didn't have the circumspection I've come to expect in pop science books. The first few chapters focusing on the basics of the field and disclaiming on how their results aren't necessarily definitive, how narrow the case study was, how new research is coming out, etc. I'm gonna be honest, I love that part. It was a little disappointing for it to be missing in one of the first books I've been able to read about my own field.

From a writing standpoint, it was pretty awful. She's very "write how you talk" which makes it easy to follow, but it must take decades to have a conversation with her with the way she's constantly inserting irrelevant facts and stories. If she wants to write a memoir that's fine, but this book was supposed to be about a specific topic and she apparently had no editor to ask if paragraphs or entire pages were actually contributing to her point. This book could have been like 150 pages and been complete. I'm sorry Ms. Grandin but I'm not reading a book about animal behavior to find out how the government would be so much better if everyone just thought like you did.

I did make it an admirable halfway through before giving up. I just have more valuable things to read with my time. If you're looking for a meaningful read about animal behavior, pick up something shorter that was written in the past couple of years.

This was one of the first research heavy books I decided to read, and it was definitely a tough one. The first 100-150 pages kept me intrigued as Temple Grandin made this comparison between the autistic and animal brain that I never had seen before. One of the key points being that us “normal” humans generalize the world while autistic people are incredibly “specialized”. This meaning that many of the small details in the world are only noticeable to autistic people and animals. Then Grandin goes into how this has helped her career into building and developing ethical farm systems that helps animals live a more enjoyable life. She also goes into how Skinner’s oversimplification of behavior has caused decades of behavior psychology to not be studied. Grandin took an approach to behavior in this book that was incredibly elaborate, and showed us that not everything is based off of positive and negative reinforcement. She also implements her own comedy into this book which keeps us as the audience like her even more of a person. My only person complaint for this book is simply as a person that’s not trying to be a behaviorist, the book is hard to get through at times as the research feels like it just keeps going in different directions. It did give me incredible insight and I would suggest this book to people that are more interested in Animal behavior. This book also did give me a greater interpretation of how I viewed autistic and disabled people. I used to feel pity for them but now I see that many of these “disabled” people have special talents that aren’t able to come out because our world is to generalized. Our world is designed for us “normal” people which just simply doesn’t give the capabilities for autistic people to shine. In conclusion, this book goes into many different directions that could be considered a difficult research book, but I do feel that it gets it’s central argument off in a way that is still entertaining. I will definitely be checking the movie out!

I feel like this is the most important book I've ever read in my life. It took me so long to read because I kept having to put it down to really think about what I had just read.

As an autistic animal lover I developed a fascination and admiration for Temple Grandin the moment I found out she existed. Her writing spoke to me in a way none ever had before, she has such a direct and insightful voice I felt as if she was in the room having a conversation with me.

I feel the language around autism has become to sensitive and watered down in recent years. Everyone wants to speak in inexact measures because they don't want to offend or exclude anyone. I think most people would find the comparison of the autistic brain to the animal brain insulting, but what Grandin said about the autistic brain I felt in my soul. I feel like she said a lot of things in this book that I've been waiting my entire life to be put into words, in a way I can point at and go "exactly! That's me!"

Filled with both relatable ideas and completely new concepts this book gave me a lot to think about, and I will probably be thinking about it for the rest of my life.

I agree with People magazine's praise: it's "Full of heart, soul, and crackling intelligence".

I'm loving every sentence of it...

ספר מענין וקולח. לא יודע כמה התיאוריה שלה שאוטיסטים הם קרובים לחיות בדרך שהם חושבים נכונה.