I'm doing some background reading for our upcoming BookMania!. Dr. Clive Wynne will be speaking, so I read his 2004 book Do Animals Think? (#878). In this wide-ranging book, it seems that he comes to the conclusion that they do not; at least not like humans.
Dr. Wynne does introduce some of the amazing skills animals have developed to navigate our world, from honeybees dancing to communicate the source of rich stores of pollen, to bats' echolocation which allow them to snag tiny insects in the dark. We meet dolphins, chimpanzees and heroic pigeons among others here. But do they have languages like humans, as some claim? Do they deserve legal personhood, as some animal activists demand? The jury is out on these questions, but Dr. Wynne doesn't seem to think so, even though the animals we share the world with deserve further psychological studies into the amazing things they are capable of.
It's a read guaranteed to make you think!
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