by Mark Bekoff
In this wonderful book Mark Bekoff has collected anecdotal stories from some fifty different scientists and behavioral researches, showing animals expressing a myriad of emotions. Each story is fairly brief, and they are grouped into sections: love, fear, anger, joy, grief and "fellow feeling" or empathy. The accounts are by turns curious, fascinating, amusing and sad. Some are also really dry and boring. I felt this had more to do with the variety of writing styles than the actual stories themselves. The awesome photographs more than make up for a few hard-to-read paragraphs. The Smile of a Dolphin is a book any animal lover will appreciate, and one skeptics of animal emotions would do good to read. Some notable contributers include Jane Goodall, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Roger and Deborah Fouts, Irene Pepperberg, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas and Michael W. Fox.Rating: 4/5 224 pages, 2000
You read the most interesting looking animal books!
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Lezlie
Fascinating.
ReplyDeleteThis one sounds really interesting. I don't usually read animal books, but I might have to give this one a try.
ReplyDeleteOoh, I love books about animals, and especially books that help us realize how much we have in common with animals. It amazes me that anyone with a household pet could think animals don't have emotions. I once heard a woman with a degree in biology (of all things) claim that dogs can't THINK. Apparently they are similar to chairs and paper clips that regard. (????)
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