Book Description
Ask someone who works with horses how best to communicate with a balky colt and she will tell you that horses do not respond to human cajoling. To be successful the human must understand and work with, not against, the horse’s instincts, needs, and fears. When a trainer resorts to human teaching methods — reasoning, begging, bribing, even hugging and kissing — the horse will become confused and unable to respond appropriately. But if horses are treated respectfully with methods they understand, everyone involved — animal and human — will be happier, safer, and more productive.
Horse trainer and instructor Cherry Hill believes that every human/horse relationship benefits from a greater human understanding of what motivates horses, how they experience the world, what makes them happy, and what worries them. Journey through the equine mind with Hill as she explores all that makes a horse tick. How do his basic needs dictate his behavior and mood? What touches and tastes appeal to his senses? How does his “flight or fight” instinct dictate his response to sudden movements?
Hill offers interactive experiments — fun for both horse and human — that bear out her findings on horse behavior. And her final chapter presents simple training methods that draw from the insights and information presented throughout the book.
Customer Reviews:
Winifred's View.......2007-09-28
I have purchased many books on horses and riding, but Cherry Hill's "..Think Like a Horse" explained and reinforced so much more about what I was questioning and experiencing with my horse. It is certainly a wonderful resourse for "newbies" like myself who have discovered the wonders of horse at a late age, but I believe it also holds a lot of insights for the more experienced riders/owners who care about knowing their horses at least as well as they ride/show them. I was looking for something to explain a particular change in my horse's behavior (after eye exams, blood work etc turned up negative) and I believe I found it in Ms. Hill's book. Winnie and I thank her for sharing her knowledge and wisdom in a book packed with information.
If I were a horse.......2007-09-20
If I were a horse, I would want this author to be my "keeper." This book is written with keen insight and clearly communicated to anyone who owns a horse, rides a horse or has dreamed of galloping across a great meadow as free as the wind. I highly recommend this book along with another book that embraces horses: It's called On the Trail of the Pony Express and the book follows Cherokee author, Jerry Ellis, for 2,000 miles along the Pony Express Trail by foot, horse, covered wagon and canoe from Missouri to California.
Wonderful book!.......2007-07-15
This is a delightful book full of information and insight from an often under-appreciated trainer. Cherry Hill covers everything from development to grooming to behavior to training.
Information which is normally strewn across several horse books comes together in this single volume. This is a must-read for every horse enthusiast.
How to think like a horse.......2007-06-08
The book was very informative and easy to understand
How to think like a horse.......2007-05-29
Received the book in a very quick time....I love the book....finished it in 3 days....Thank You
Book Description
Bestselling author, psychologist, and world-renowned expert on dog behavior and training Dr. Stanley Coren presents the most informative, in-depth, fascinating book yet on dogs. Acclaimed for its solid scientific research and entertaining, eminently readable style, How Dogs Think gives you the insight that you need to understand the silly, quirky, and apparently irrational behaviors that dogs demonstrate, as well as those stunning flashes of brilliance and creativity that they also can display. It lets you see through a dog's eyes, hear through his ears, and even sense the world through his nose, as Coren presents a fascinating picture of the way dogs interpret their world and their human companions, and of how they solve problems, learn, and take in new information.
How Dogs Think also answers questions about our canine companions that have puzzled many: Can dogs count? Do they have an appreciation of art or music? Can a dog learn how to do something just by watching another dog or even a person do it? Do dogs dream? What is the nature of dog personality? Which behaviors are prewired into your dog, and which can you actually change? And, can dogs actually sense future earthquakes or detect cancer?
With sound behavioral science and numerous funny, informative anecdotes, experiments, and firsthand observations, How Dogs Think shatters many common myths and misconceptions about our four-legged friends and reveals a wealth of surprises about their mental abilities and potential. It will make you love and appreciate all dogs -- including your own -- in wonderful new ways.
Customer Reviews:
Not at all what I expected!.......2007-03-31
The book was not at all a fun read! Almost every chapter was boring and non informative. The book goes on and on and yet you still feel you have not read anything of intrest.
How Dogs Think: What the World Looks Like to Them and Why They Act the Way They Do.......2007-03-30
Fantastic Book! If you're a dog owner, dog lover or BOTH then this is the book for you. If you want to understand your dog like never before then do yourself a favour and purchase this book. It gives a wonderful incite through the dogs eyes how they see us and why they do certain things. This book certainly goes hand in hand with How to Speak Dog. A must read.
Questionable facts.......2006-03-29
The author cites research of mine on deafness, but gets the facts about my research wrong and gets the reference citation wrong. Hopefully he does a better job with the other research he quotes.
How Dogs (and Humans) Think!.......2006-03-05
This is an excellent book to give an overview of how dogs views the world as well as how that view compares to the view of humans. Dr. Cohen not only explains how dogs think but also how their senses work to perceive the world, again as compared to humans. The information is not just based on casual observations and anecdotal tales, although those are used, but also based on many laboratory studies over the years to give a good solid foundation.
This book is invaluable if you live with a dog, train dogs, work with dogs, or just love and admire dogs. I would consider this a must read for dog owners and especially trainers - after all you cannot teach if you don't understand how the mind receives and process the information you are trying get across. Dr. Cohen also does a beautiful job of dispelling many myths - like dogs don't see color - and provides the scientific proof to back it up.
Many of the studies used in this book go towards demonstrating how brilliant nature is in creating and how amazing the mind is - whether it is canine or primate!
Dog's don't think they are people, they think we are dogs........2006-02-06
In his usual thorough and "text-booky" approach, before he takes on the real question of how dogs think, Coren wants us to fully understand how information, used in the thought process, gets into the mind of the dog in the first place. To this end, he takes us on a detailed study of eyes, ears, nose, tongue and touch. Many implications for animal trainers are strewn throughout the entire manuscript. Along the way, he imbeds other useful suggestions for dog owners on how to get finicky eaters to eat, how to test your elderly dog's eyesight and hearing and how to compensate for weaknesses that commonly afflict elderly dogs. He even addresses the question of whether dogs have a sixth sense that allows them to predict earthquakes or anticipate exactly when their master will arrive home. Yes, I love the way he puts this section together and, no, I won't divulge his conclusion.
Did I say "text-booky"? How Dogs Think has been very thoroughly researched with over 241 citations. It would make a fine text book as part of an extensive canine trainer certification program like that offered by the Animal Behavior College http://animalbehaviorcollege.com for example. Coren can be rather technical at times, using and defining terms like "invisible displacement test", "implicit", "explicit", "episodic", and "semantic" memory. Bottom line, it's his approach that's both the good and the bad about the book. While it's what I was looking for, it may not be what you are looking for.
Finally, on page 290 (with less than 10% left to read), Coren asks the real question: are dogs conscious and do they have a mind similar to our own? His conclusion, they are considerably different from us in degree but not really all that different in kind. For example, although not necessarily something to be proud of, he cites evidence that dogs do lie. I've seen that myself.
One cold winter evening, our two youngest dogs were lying by my feet taking up all the high priced real estate. Their mother, who generally staked her claim first, came in and found her favorite spot taken. Her next step was to walk out on the back porch and bark "something interesting is going on out here".
< cite Coren > The young ones flew out to see what was going on and, while they were barking it up, mom came back in and lay at my feet.
Dogs are excellent keep-away players. How could this be so unless dogs are constantly working to figure out how we think? Empirical evidence says they play that complex game much better than we do. Coren's conclusion is that dogs understand how we think far better than we understand how they think. I'm willing to believe that.
He sites evidence that challenges many common beliefs. Dogs are not actually color blind but rather have eyes that evolution has optimized for hunting at dawn and dusk when color offers little survival advantage. Dogs learn very well from observation, particularly from watching humans. The "Theory of mind" actually does apply to dogs at least to some extent. This is so because the social brain of the dog is similar to that of a human in that both have evolved to solve social problems. Dogs can distinguish more from less, they can count, and even perform minimal addition. Finally, dogs can pass a very limited version of the Turing test.
Major author's message: dogs are much like we are. They are a little worse in some ways (dogs could never even come close to passing a eye test for a driver's license), but better in others (like hearing, smell, and seeing things in motion). Perhaps dogs don't so much think that they are people, but rather, think that we are dogs with some amazing strengths and some absolutely baffling weaknesses.
Book Description
Does your dog know when you've had a bad day? Can your cat tell that the coffee pot you left on might start a fire? Could a chimpanzee be trained to program your computer? In this provocative book, noted animal expert Clive Wynne debunks some commonly held notions about our furry friends. It may be romantic to ascribe human qualities to critters, he argues, but it's not very realistic. While animals are by no means dumb, they don't think the same way we do. Contrary to what many popular television shows would have us believe, animals have neither the "theory-of-mind" capabilities that humans have (that is, they are not conscious of what others are thinking) nor the capacity for higher-level reasoning. So, in Wynne's view, when Fido greets your arrival by nudging your leg, he's more apt to be asking for dinner than commiserating with your job stress.
That's not to say that animals don't possess remarkable abilities--and Do Animals Think? explores countless examples: there's the honeybee, which not only remembers where it found food but communicates this information to its hivemates through an elaborate dance. And how about the sonar-guided bat, which locates flying insects in the dark of night and devours lunch on the wing?
Engagingly written, Do Animals Think? takes aim at the work of such renowned animal rights advocates as Peter Singer and Jane Goodall for falsely humanizing animals. Far from impoverishing our view of the animal kingdom, however, it underscores how the world is richer for having such a diversity of minds--be they of the animal or human variety.
Customer Reviews:
The Great Divide II.......2005-12-28
I wrote the letter (below) in reply to Marc Bekoff's American Scientist (AS) review of Clive Wynne's very informative and well written book. Professor Bekoff was given an opportunity by the editors of AS to reply to my letter but he declined. Let me just add a few additional comments evoked by Bekoff's comments on this site.
Bekoff writes that "Many observations show that members of some species imitate other animals, empathize with them, are able to take another's perspective in certain situations (there is neurobiological evidence to support the conclusion that some animals have a theory of mind), and have culture and rather sophisticated patterns of communication."
But by using words like "empathize," and, I would argue, even "think," Bekoff implies that when nonhumans do something that we describe as "empathizing" (or "thinking"), it is the same as when we use the word to describe human behavior. But that is a mistake. Without operationally defining such words each time we use them, we run the risk of confusing behaviors that most likely have different functions, even if they appear to have similar forms. And nonhumans cannot have a "theory of mind" because all the evidence for theory of mind is linguistic.
Bekoff is also wrong that, "The behaviorist view is little concerned with evolution. It also fails to recognize that the behavior of many animals is far too flexible and situationspecific to be explained in terms of simplified stimulusresponse contingencies. Marked withinspecies variability is quite common, and this adaptive variability often (although not always) lends itself readily to "cognitive" explanations invoking consciousness, intentions and beliefs."
All behaviorists that I know (and I know quite a few), including me, are all thoroughgoing Darwinians. We recognize the contribution of natural selction to the behavior of organisms, but, as Bekoff notes, we also recognize the flexibility or adaptiveness of behavior. Bekoff is correct that such flexibility cannot be explained by "simplified stimulus-response contingencies," but who, since John Watson, has tried to do that? That doesn't mean that the principles of operant learning (the science of adaptive behavior within the lifetime of an organism) aren't sufficient to explain the behavior. In fact, "explanations invoking consciousness, intentions and beliefs" are not only not sufficient, they are not parsimonious, invoking as they do unobservable, undefinable, and unmeasurable processes. Such concepts are simply not necessary to explain the behavior of human beings much less other animals.
Bekoff critizes Wynn for not providing any scientific support for his reductionistic explanations, but the scientific support is in the almost one hundred years of accumulated empirical research on animal (and human) learning. From there, any interpretation based on the principles derived from that research is more parsimonious that the made-up explanations involving cognitive structures and processes.
Bekoff implies that all one has to do is to watch free ranging animals to appreciate the flexibility and complexity of animal behavior and to realize that only cognitive exlanations will suffice to understand such behavior. But cognitive explanations, born as thay are from age-old philosophical speculation about unseen and unseeable events, have never sufficed as scientific explanations and they never will.
Wynne is right on target when he claims, according to Bekoff, that "we should be very cautious about ascribing consciousness to animals and that anthropomorphic explanations have no place in the study of animal behavior." To do so in no way diminishes the complexity of the behavior of any species. As another reviewer said, we don't need to compare nonhumans (we're animals too) to humans to appreciate or respect them.
Letter to the Bookshelf
Do Animals Think? by Clive D. L. Wynne
September 21, 2004
The question in the title of Clive D. L. Wynne's book, Do Animals Think? is the wrong question to ask. In his review (September-October 2004), Mark Bekoff continues and expands this line of questioning by asking, do "animals consciously process information about their social and nonsocial environments?" "What is going on in the minds of animals? Do they have desires and beliefs?"
These are not scientific, but rather philosophical, questions that have been debated without resolution for centuries. It is not a contest (between behaviorists and cognitivists or anyone else) that can be settled by appealing to any sort of data either. There is no experimentum crucis. Nevertheless, Bekoff doesn't hesitate to throw his hat into the ring by concluding that the answers lie somewhere in the middle; between the "firm behaviorist stance," presumably taken by Wynne, that "animals are merely thoughtless robotic automatons to those who argue that all are thinking creatures with rich cognitive lives." According to Bekoff ("a rich cognitivist"), "a number of animals have the capacity for thinking about certain situations and showing flexible, adaptable behavior, whereas others may behave reflexively, with little or no thought at all."
The real scientific question about nonhumans, however, is not whether or what they think or whether they "consciously process information," but what they do in what contexts and what causes them to do it. These are the only questions that can be addressed by an objective science without resorting to irresolvable speculation about vague and muddy philosophical concepts.
Do many nonhumans show flexible, adaptive behavior? Definitely. Does that indicate consciousness (whatever that is)? Who knows? It depends on how one uses the term "consciousness." Do we need to speculate about an animal's consciousness or so-called cognitive processes to fully understand its behavior? The answer is an unequivocal "no."
If we behavioral scientists (evolutionary biologists, ethologists, behavior analysts, neuroscientists and even geneticists) can discover the physical events that are responsible for behavior, then there is nothing left to explain or about which to speculate.
Psychologists, ethologists, and neuroscientists are still intrigued by the lofty and ultimately unanswerable philosophical questions about mind and consciousness. Despite persistent optimism in some ranks, these questions will never be answered until the concepts are defined in objective, measurable terms involving the animal's behavior and its physical causes. Once that is done, the questions will become moot because we will have a complete understanding of nonhuman (and human) behavior.
Until then, the debate about human and nonhuman mind and consciousness will continue ad infinitum and ad nauseam.
A wonderful and important book on animal minds.......2005-06-08
This is an extremely well written book. Wynne has an exceptionally clear style and the book is full of wit and humour. At the same time, Wynne has a very good grasp of these complex issues. On the one hand, he explains quite beautifully which impressive perceptual and cognitive capabilities different animal species have. On the other hand, the author demonstrates very clearly that there really is a gap between humans and other animals, and that the latter simply do not possess language, self-consciousness or theory of mind. Most of the prevailing myths about animal cognition are dispelled in this book. That is what makes this such an important volume, as most of the popular books on the minds of animals seem to want to perpetuate these myths. Rather than dishing out just so stories about the evolution of cognition, or coming up with fashionable manifestos on the future of mankind, Wynne is sticking to the facts and provides a thorough analysis of extant data. This impressive book is a badly needed breath of fresh air in a subject area that is dominated by woolly idealism. I recommend it strongly.
The great divide.......2005-04-26
Do animals think? Well, surely some do, you may think. And an increasing
number of researchers across disciplines would agree with you: They are
trying to determine hownot whetheranimals consciously process information
about their social and nonsocial environments.
What is going on in the minds of animals? Do they have desires and
beliefs? Zealots abound at both ends of a spectrum that ranges from those
who believe that animals are merely thoughtless robotic automatons to
those who argue that all are thinking creatures with rich cognitive lives.
I imagine that the truth lies somewhere in the middle: A number of animals
have the capacity for thinking about certain situations and showing
flexible, adaptable behavior, whereas others may behave reflexively, with
little or no thought at all.
Psychologist Clive D. L. Wynne takes a firm behaviorist stance on the
issue in his new book, Do Animals Think? He argues that animals, even
those commonly believed to have active minds and a good deal of conscious
thoughtcompanion animals, dolphins and great apesreally don't think much
about anything. Here, and also in a brief communication and an essay
published in the March 11 and April 8 issues of Nature, Wynne says that we
should be very cautious about ascribing consciousness to animals and that
anthropomorphic explanations have no place in the study of animal
behavior.
I should confess right away that I'm a member of the opposing campa rich
cognitivist. Thus I was skeptical of Wynne's position from the outset. But
I was also open to his arguments. And I did find some of the information
he presents about bees, bats and other animals to be both fascinating and
thoughtprovoking.
Unfortunately, Wynne's adversarial tone and narrow choice of data made
this book a difficult read for me. Throughout he takes potshots at
wellknown scientists, philosophers and advocates of animal protection:
Roger Fouts especially, and also the late Donald Griffin, Sue
SavageRumbaugh, Frans de Waal, Jane Goodall, Peter Singer, Steven Wise and
even Linda McCartney. Wynne criticizes them for using questionable
information about animal sentience to support the view that we should be
deeply concerned with animal wellbeing. The book opens with an account of
violence against humans by a member of the Animal Liberation Front, and it
ends on a similar note, with Wynne criticizing animal protectionists for
flawed thinking. He claims that he longs for the certainty of those who
attribute consciousness and the ability to experience pain to many
animals. But in fact, he advocates the opposite point of view with that
same level of certainty.
Although Wynne admits that we do not know very much about animal thinking,
this does not stop him from arguing that his reductionist views are
correct. He believes that the differences between animals and humans are
greater, and more significant, than the similarities. But are they? Does
Wynne include all animals or only some species in his arguments for mental
dissimilarity? He claims that
The psychological abilities that make human culture possibleenthusiasm to
imitate others, language, and the ability to place oneself imaginatively
into another's perspective on eventsare almost entirely lacking in any
other species.
What does "almost" mean? Nobody claims that other animals are identical to
us, but arguments invoking evolutionary continuity leave room for the
conclusion that the differences are, in fact, smalldifferences in degree
rather than differences in kind. Many observations show that members of
some species imitate other animals, empathize with them, are able to take
another's perspective in certain situations (there is neurobiological
evidence to support the conclusion that some animals have a theory of
mind), and have culture and rather sophisticated patterns of
communication.
The behaviorist view is little concerned with evolution. It also fails to
recognize that the behavior of many animals is far too flexible and
situationspecific to be explained in terms of simplified stimulusresponse
contingencies. Marked withinspecies variability is quite common, and this
adaptive variability often (although not always) lends itself readily to
"cognitive" explanations invoking consciousness, intentions and beliefs.
It remains to be shown how large the differences are between humans and
other animals. Although Wynne claims to recognize that not enough data are
available to make definitive statements, he offers them nonetheless,
arriving at some sweeping generalizations. He argues for the objective
study of behavior, butironicallymuch of his book serves to illustrate that
science isn't valuefree and that every scientist has an agenda.
Scientists who are skeptical about research on animal thinking typically
criticize it for being anecdotal and anthropomorphic. They claim that
anecdotes don't provide sufficient data (a view with which I and other
rich cognitivists generally agree) and that anthropomorphic explanations
are extremely imprecise. Wynne favors reductionistic stimulusresponse
explanations over ones that appeal to such notions as consciousness,
intentions and beliefs. However, he doesn't offer any scientific support
for his position. And in fact there is no empirical evidence that the
explanations he favors are better for understanding and predicting
behavior than those he eschews.
Many who, like Wynne, favor mechanistic explanations have not spent much
time watching freeranging animals. Were they to do so, the complexity and
flexibility of animal behavior would force them to realize that no simple
explanatory scheme will be correct all of the time. What is more, they
would appreciate better how much more there still is to learn about animal
behavior.
Almost daily, surprising new findings crop up: New Caledonian crows are
better at making and using tools than many primates; fish show culture and
likely feel pain; a dog named Rico knows about 200 words and can figure
out, through exclusion learning, that an unfamiliar sound refers to an
unfamiliar toy. So it's best to keep an open mind. The fact that an animal
doesn't do something in one context doesn't necessarily mean that it won't
be able to do it in another.
Returning at the end of the book to the theme of his opening pages, Wynne
expresses heavy skepticism about whether animals feel pain and whether
that should influence how we treat them. On the one hand, he praises
philosopher Jeremy Bentham's claim that the key question for determining
the moral and legal standing of animals is "Can they suffer?"not "Can they
reason?" or "Can they talk?" But on the other hand, Wynne notes that even
if we could measure pain in animals, "it is still not clear that this
would tell us what to do and to whom." Feeling pain is not, in his view,
the only criterion for deciding whether animals are worthy of our concern.
He says, revealingly, that animals "are valuable to us because of who we
are, not what they are."
Unfortunately, a great divide remains between opposing camps. The
polemical tone and lack of balance in the book make it difficult for me to
recommend it as a text for a course unless it's read alongside a book that
presents a variety of views on animal thinking. And inconsistencies in the
argumentation make it hard for me to recommend it for a general audience.
I do think that the book will serve to stimulate discussion of such issues
as what it means to "know" something, how much information must be
available before we can draw reliable, sweeping conclusions, and how we
determine how certain we can be that those conclusions are correct.
Studies of animal thinking lend themselves nicely to that philosophical
exercise.
Lively and thought-provoking.......2004-05-03
With our tendency to anthropomorphize everything, from playful puppies to temperamental automobiles, it stands to reason that the animal mind is a topic of hot debate.
Literally. Animal rights activists have torched and bombed facilities associated with medical research or product testing on animals. Wynne finds these zealots baffling. Why, he wonders, focus on researchers rather than farmers, who, for sheer numbers, do away with a lot more animals? The Animal Liberation Front, he notes, in 2001 documented "the rescue of 5,000 animals, not one of them a pig. Why not?"
People simply do not bring an objective eye to bear on the subject of animal minds and that includes scientists. In lively and provocative style, Wynne, psychologist and professor, attempts to remedy this. He devotes chapters to four well-studied species: the honeybee, the pigeon, the bat and the dolphin. Others, particularly apes, also make frequent appearances.
He examines what makes these animals different from us, and what we have in common. What is special about these creatures? What is it like to be them? Are animals self-aware? How can we know? Chapters are devoted to the faculties that - supposedly - set us apart and above the animal kingdom: reasoning, language, and "the ability to put oneself imaginatively into the position of another - what we would call `theory of mind.' "
No one argues for the intelligence of bees. Yet the dance of the honeybee conveys detailed information about the whereabouts of high-quality food. The bee knows her food is better than what her sisters are bringing in because unloader bees serve her quickly. Mediocre loads have to wait. But some bees, even when informed their offering is hardly worth unloading, do their dance anyway. They are able to reason that near and plentiful is worthwhile even if the quality is below average.
Most, perhaps all, animals learn from experience. Even the sea slug learns to anticipate a poke. But reasoning was thought to be the province of humans until monkeys were shown to do it in the 1980s. A few years later even pigeons demonstrated the ability to make fairly complex deductions.
But then, a setback. Monkeys who could negotiate complicated patterns to predict the next in a series, were unable to judge where a peanut would fall through a curved tube. Although the simple mechanism was right in front of them, they still assumed the peanut would fall in a straight line. Wynne deconstructs these experiments to show how the simple logic involved for the animal in each step contributes to a complex task, while what seems to us the simplest diversion of a curve could stymie another primate, unable to make the leap.
The language discussion naturally devotes a lot of its energy to ape studies, which seem to show that apes can learn to use sign or symbol language. Wynne debunks this by giving us chunks of original data alongside the researcher's conclusions, showing a clear bias for enthusiasm. Readers of the popular books he refers to may counter with numerous endearing or amazing chimp anecdotes, but Wynne would probably agree that these show a complex and fascinating animal, while not a user of language.
Chimps don't have the brain mechanisms for language, but we don't have the bat's echolocation or the dolphin's sonar. He likens the relationship of species to a similarity sandwich with commonalities in a squishy middle, dissimilarities on the bottom and qualities unique to each species on top.
Wynne is clear about his own biases - he is basically a skeptic, with an open mind. He has a great appreciation for animals, which does not depend on them being like us. And, like most scientists, he relishes demolishing his colleagues, particularly the ones who, like himself, have written books for the general reader.
His writing is clear, well-organized and witty. The jury is still out on whether (and what) animals think, but Wynne's book is a highly entertaining and informative contribution to the debate.
Average customer rating:
- enjoyable and entertaining, also informative
- enjoyable and entertaining, also informative
- A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing
- The Best Book on the subject!
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Do Cats Think?: Notes of a Cat-Watcher
Paul Corey
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Customer Reviews:
enjoyable and entertaining, also informative.......2003-02-18
While it's true, as another review here says, that the violent deaths of almost all the cats made it both sobering and an unintended "prime argument against free-ranging" cats, I found a lot of truth in it; even the violent deaths. Most people who know cats know of a lot of cats who've died by cars, etc. Yes, it made it sad, but it also injected an extra dose of reality in what was a really heady, exhilerating jaunt through the intelligences of the author's cats. Kept one from viewing it as mere fluff.
Personally, I love books like this. If you like cat anecdotes that are NEVER boring, "pet" theories about intelligence, and a glimpse inside the machinations and workings of a cat's mind, then this book is for you. Although I must admit the part in the beginning, about how "people will work only a few job-hours a week" by the year 2000, was unintentionally quite funny.
Cat people would enjoy this, as would anyone interested in animal intelligence. The parts about the author's cats learning about snakes, feuding with skunk-like animals, and his one cat who learned to pose for the camera (and only for the camera!) were especially memorable.
enjoyable and entertaining, also informative.......2003-02-18
While it's true, as another review here says, that the violent deaths of almost all the cats made it both sobering and "an unintended argument against free-ranging cats," I found a lot of truth in it; even the violent deaths. Most people who know cats know of a lot of cats who've died by cars, etc. Yes, it made it sad, but it also injected an extra dose of reality in what was a really heady, exhilerating jaunt through the intelligences of the author's cats.
Personally, I love books like this. If you like cat anecdotes that are NEVER boring, "pet" theories about intelligence, and a glimpse inside the machinations and workings of a cat's mind, then this book is for you. Although I must admit the part in the beginning, about people having more free time than they knew what to do with by the year 2000, was unintentionally quite funny.
Cat people would enjoy this, as would anyone interested in animal intelligence. The parts about the author's cats learning about snakes, feuding with skunk-like animals, and his one cat who learned to pose for the camera (and only for the camera!) were especially memorable.
A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing.......2001-11-03
Maybe it was a different time. If he published the book in 1977, and he was getting older at that time, then Corey reflects the sadly outdated attitudes of his day toward cats.
The book only marginally deals with the title, "Do Cats Think?", but when he does address the title, he does so admirably. In addition, he does well when puncturing the myth of infallibility and objectivity in the sciences. Yet, the book is mostly stories of his relationships with his many cats. Had he limited himself to his stories, the book would have been a treasure.
However, the heartwarming stories mostly end with the violent deaths of the cats. This book is, albeit unintentionally, a prime argument against free-ranging companion animals, even in so-called "safe" rural areas. Corey never seems to connect cause and effect.
I'd recommend this book only if you know a lot about the subject, and can separate the wheat from the chaff.
The Best Book on the subject!.......2001-07-26
I was amazed by this book. I thought I was an expert on cats until I read this book. I was astounded by some of the things the author mentions in his book. I won't give ANY away to you now, because I really want you to get this book for yourself. I know you won't go wrong and will love it as much as I do.
I especially like the author's writing style. It was very easy to read and understand. The concepts and observations in the book are quite fascinating.
Get this book! You won't be disappointed!
Average customer rating:
|
Animal Rights (What Do We Think About?)
Jillian Powell
Manufacturer: Hodder Wayland
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Children's Books
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| Baby-3
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ASIN: 0750241144 |
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The great divide.(Animal Cognition)(Book Review) : An article from: American Scientist
Marc Bekoff
Manufacturer: Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
Nonfiction
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ASIN: B0009GKCSK
Release Date: 2005-08-01 |
Average customer rating:
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How Do We Know Animals Can Think? (How Do We Know)
Steve Parker
Manufacturer: Raintree Steck-Vaughn Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding
1900s
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Anatomy & Physiology
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General
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ASIN: 0811438821 |
Average customer rating:
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Should We Eat Animals? (What Do You Think?)
Andrew Langley
Manufacturer: Heinemann
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1432903691 |
Average customer rating:
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Should We Eat Animals? (What Do You Think?)
Manufacturer: Heinemann Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0431110093 |
Books:
- Human Body in Health and Disease, The
- Introduction to Biomedical Engineering, Second Edition (Biomedical Engineering)
- Jawetz, Melnick, & Adelberg's Medical Microbiology (LANGE Basic Science)
- Langman's Medical Embryology
- Lichens of North America
- Manual of Clinical Microbiology
- Microbe
- Microbiology: An Introduction
- Microbiology: An Introduction (9th Edition)
- Microbiology: An Introduction (9th Edition)
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