p.37

"Ein Vogel zu sein, bedeutet intensiver zu leben als jedes andere Lebewesen - Menschen eingeschlossen. Vögel haben heißeres Blut, leuchtendere Farben, stärkere Emotionen ... sie leben ausschließlich in der Gegenwart, meist ein Leben voller Freuden."


p.48

"Ob Tiere eine bestimmte Emotion ähnlich empfinden wie Menschen - haben Kaninchen ähnliche Ängste wie Menschen? - spielt keine Rolle. Entscheidend ist nur, dass sich für alle Freude und Leid gleichermaßen anfühlt."

p.203

"Die Farben und Formen der Blüten spiegeln perfekt das wider, was Bienen attraktiv finden ... Es wäre ein paradoxes und anthropozentrisches Missverständnis zu glauben, dass Bienen und wir eine unterschiedliche Vorstellung von Schönheit hätten ... nur weil sie einfachere Lebewesen sind."


p.219

"In Wirklichkeit verfügen Fische über soziale Intelligenz, haben Strategien entwickelt, um zu manipulieren, zu strafen und zu versöhnen, sie leben in stabiler kultureller Tradition und arbeiten zusammen, um Fressfeinde zu meiden und Nahrung zu finden."

All I did today was read this book, I was entranced by the research into animal happiness, pleasure, love, hum0ur, erotic fun, appreciation of beauty, music, sunsets and and all those warm emotions we attribute to ourselves and deny, or at least ignore, or at least the scientists do, that animals feel as well.

It is astonishing now to think that just 40 years ago, in the 1980s, behaviourism was still dominant in psychology departments conducting research on animals. Then to suggest that an animal given an electric shock felt pain was to be guilty of the cardinal sin of anthropomorphism. Instead the shock was described as an 'aversive stimulus' that the animal moved away from, or at least attempted to. If saying that animals could feel pain was taboo, saying that they can experience pleasure was not even on the radar.

It is as if scientists are willing to go into the minutest physical and neurological evolutionary aspects of ourselves but that emotions and pleasure are not also evolutionary. How is it likely that emotions also did not evolve in animals lower on the evolutionary tree and grow and refine as they became more 'useful'?

Sometimes it seems as if scientists have this blind spot that the whole world can see but that they can't prove so therefore it doesn't exist. An example: those of us who live in the hurricane zones, especially in the mountainous tropics have always known that hurricanes contain tornados. You can see their paths. When the disaster agencies come and provide blue tarpaulins to cover where there were once roofs, you can see very clearly the paths the tornados took. But I can remember back in Hugo when it was utterly denied that hurricanes contained tornados. Even when they were looking at them.

And so it is with animals. We can all see that our pets love us and can joyfully express it. I had my little rescue kitty, Ollie, from May 2021 to January 2022, she was 7 ounces and could use a mask as a hammock when my son found her. She was the most joyous, loving little kittie I ever had. She played with washing up foam, sat nicely on the car seat for trips out, slept in bed with me, teased the other cats. She was full of fun. And then a car hit her and she was only 10 months old. And the book said this

Most polar bears die before their first birthday. It is sad that not all polar bears grow into adults and a shame that humans are making things worse. And yet, a six-month old polar bear has been suckled and nurtured by a protective mother, has experienced over 100 sunrises and sunsets, and probably hasn't bemoaned the transience of life. Most lives, even shortened ones, are probably better lived than not lived at all.

The chapter I enjoyed most was on sex. In common with people, research is on male animals, penis this and penis that, but not much, hardly any, on the clitoris. Yet all female mammals have one, and they have no point other than pleasure. So although we are continually told by the anodyne David Attenborough's of this world, that sex is mating and only when they come into season, why on earth would females have a clitoris unless sex was Very Good Fun?

And indeed it is for many animals. Chimpanzees are rampantly promiscuous, their - and our - cousins, the bonobos screw anything that moves and love their own sex as much as the other. They have very big clits and find time every few hours to rub them together. Animals masturbate, they have sex outside of 'heat', they form homosexual partnerships, some like oral sex (my favourite which I wrote about elsewhere are the bats where the males are said to perform cunnilingusto scoop out the sperm of a previous male, but no one knows why the females like fellatio! There are even (male) animals that like auto-fellatio. It takes all kinds but this is hidden from us in all the documentaries and most of the books.

When I used to take my son to school, we passed a hill where there were always cattle. The leader was of course the largest female and she and the bull were quite obviously in love. They were never as much as a yard from each other, always flicking each other with their tails and rubbing flanks. This went on for years. I have seen, many times, a hen and a rooster form a pair bond that lasts for years, they aren't members of a flock, just the two of them sometimes joined by another hen, often raising chicks, but ultimately together. Amazing the things you see on an island where farming is all free range (in everyone's gardens).

The tone of the book was very defensive. It seemed the author at any moment expected a scientist to pop out and say that he was anthropomorphising the animals' behaviour. He was always putting 'the other side' even though he didn't give any credence to it (neither do I). So although it was a very enjoyable book, I didn't really learn a lot. As with Jonathan Balcombe's previous book, What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins, he wants us to use the knowledge of their emotions to give them greater consideration, to be less cruel with farming, with taking away their habitat, and to consider that possibly everything, including jumping spiders, has a personality.

And personality is 'person' and that means we need to treat them with more respect.

(My cat Coco is begging right now, she wants soft food not kibble. She's a bit challenging these days. I wonder if she read this book over my shoulder? Nah, cats don't need to; ike people cats have expectations and one of them is that I will respect her and ultimately give in and buy her the canned food she loves.)

This book has a lot of interesting information about how animal behavior is much closer to human behavior than it appears through our human-centric perspective. There is a good mix of systematic analyses towards the way we view animals as well as more specific examples and anecdotes that re-center the arguments made on the idea of animals being thinking, feeling individuals rather than the monolithic species we perceive them as.

This is one of the best impulse buys I have ever made. The contents are very efficiently organised, the narrative is engaging, and there is a wonderful balance of science and anecdote. And the subject is of great importance. The author postulates that animals are, not unlike us, feeling, unique individuals that deserve to be treated with consideration and respect. They can feel fear and joy, they appreciate beauty and play games, they enjoy relaxation and thrills of risk, they can feel love and resentment. Some of them even develop a sense of humour and morality. "An animal destined for the slaughterhouse still deserves respect and compassion."

I recommend this book to everyone. I would put it on the obligatory reading lists at schools, if I only could.