
Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?
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Narrated by:
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Sean Runnette
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By:
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Frans de Waal
About this listen
From world-renowned biologist and primatologist Frans de Waal comes this groundbreaking work on animal intelligence destined to become a classic.
What separates your mind from an animal's? Maybe you think it's your ability to design tools, your sense of self, or your grasp of past and future - all traits that have helped us define ourselves as the planet's preeminent species. But in recent decades, these claims have been eroded - or even disproved outright - by a revolution in the study of animal cognition. Take the way octopuses use coconut shells as tools; elephants that classify humans by age, gender, and language; or Ayumu, the young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University whose flash memory puts that of humans to shame.
Based on research involving crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, whales, and of course chimpanzees and bonobos, Frans de Waal explores both the scope and the depth of animal intelligence. He offers a firsthand account of how science has stood traditional behaviorism on its head by revealing how smart animals really are - and how we've underestimated their abilities for too long. People often assume a cognitive ladder from lower to higher forms, with our own intelligence at the top. But what if it is more like a bush, with cognition taking different, often incomparable forms? Would you presume yourself dumber than a squirrel because you're less adept at recalling the locations of hundreds of buried acorns? Or would you judge your perception of your surroundings as more sophisticated than that of an echolocating bat?
De Waal reviews the rise and fall of the mechanistic view of animals and opens our minds to the idea that animal minds are far more intricate and complex than we have assumed. De Waal's landmark work will convince you to rethink everything you thought you knew about animal - and human - intelligence.
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- Narrated by: Carl Safina
- Length: 16 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Weaving decades of field observations with exciting new discoveries about the brain, Carl Safina's landmark book offers an intimate view of animal behavior to challenge the fixed boundary between humans and nonhuman animals.
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Great book by a scientist with a heart
- By Sharon on 11-12-15
By: Carl Safina
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The Tangled Tree
- A Radical New History of Life
- By: David Quammen
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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In the mid-1970s, scientists began using DNA sequences to reexamine the history of all life. Perhaps the most startling discovery to come out of this new field is horizontal gene transfer (HGT), or the movement of genes across species lines. For instance, we now know that roughly eight percent of the human genome arrived not through traditional inheritance from directly ancestral forms, but sideways by viral infection - a type of HGT. In The Tangled Tree David Quammen chronicles these discoveries through the lives of the researchers who made them.
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Very Enjoyable and Readable
- By Dennis on 08-18-18
By: David Quammen
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The Sixth Extinction
- An Unnatural History
- By: Elizabeth Kolbert
- Narrated by: Anne Twomey
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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A major audiobook about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes. Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on Earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.
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Lifts you out of the ordinary
- By Regina on 04-28-14
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Your Inner Fish
- A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
- By: Neil Shubin
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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To better understand the inner workings of our bodies and to trace the origins of many of today's most common diseases, we have to turn to unexpected sources: worms, flies, and even fish.
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Your Inner Fish
- By Mel on 02-03-08
By: Neil Shubin
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Discipline & Punish
- The Birth of the Prison
- By: Michel Foucault
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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This groundbreaking audiobook by Michel Foucault, the most influential philosopher since Sartre, compels us to reevaluate our assumptions about all the ensuing reforms in the penal institutions of the West. For as Foucault examines innovations that range from the abolition of torture to the institution of forced labor and the appearance of the modern penitentiary, he suggests that punishment has shifted its focus from the prisoner's body to his soul-and that our very concern with rehabilitation encourages and refines criminal activity.
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MORE FOUCAULT PLEASE!!
- By Maggie on 01-02-14
By: Michel Foucault
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The Secret of Our Success
- How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter
- By: Joseph Henrich
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 17 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. On the other hand, human groups have produced ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into a vast range of diverse environments. What has enabled us to dominate the globe, more than any other species, while remaining virtually helpless as lone individuals?
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The power of sociality to supercharge evolution
- By Graeme Newell on 09-27-19
By: Joseph Henrich
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Coyote America
- A Natural and Supernatural History
- By: Dan Flores
- Narrated by: Elijah Alexander
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Coyote America is both an environmental and a deep natural history of the coyote. It traces both the five-million-year-long biological story of an animal that has become the "wolf" in our backyards and its cultural evolution from a preeminent spot in Native American religions to the hapless foil of the Road Runner. A deeply American tale, the story of the coyote in the American West and beyond is a sort of Manifest Destiny in reverse.
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Very Enjoyable Book, Subject Matter, and Reader
- By John Townsend on 03-17-17
By: Dan Flores
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The Hidden Life of Trees
- What They Feel, How They Communicate - Discoveries from a Secret World
- By: Peter Wohlleben
- Narrated by: Mike Grady
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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How do trees live? Do they feel pain or have awareness of their surroundings? Research is now suggesting trees are capable of much more than we have ever known. In The Hidden Life of Trees, forester Peter Wohlleben puts groundbreaking scientific discoveries into a language everyone can relate to.
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Tree Hugger
- By Darwin8u on 04-18-19
By: Peter Wohlleben
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The Omnivore's Dilemma
- A Natural History of Four Meals
- By: Michael Pollan
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 15 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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"What should we have for dinner?" To one degree or another, this simple question assails any creature faced with a wide choice of things to eat. Anthropologists call it the omnivore's dilemma. Choosing from among the countless potential foods nature offers, humans have had to learn what is safe, and what isn't. Today, as America confronts what can only be described as a national eating disorder, the omnivore's dilemma has returned with an atavistic vengeance.
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Great book; didn't love the reading
- By Lily on 11-02-08
By: Michael Pollan
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The Moral Animal
- Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology
- By: Robert Wright
- Narrated by: Greg Thornton
- Length: 16 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Are men literally born to cheat? Does monogamy actually serve women's interests? These are among the questions that have made The Moral Animal one of the most provocative science books in recent years. Wright unveils the genetic strategies behind everything from our sexual preferences to our office politics - as well as their implications for our moral codes and public policies.
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Ridiculously Insightful
- By Liron on 10-25-10
By: Robert Wright
Now hear this
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Good, but a bit dry in places
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The narrator was also amazing. He read the book in a way which really pulled me in and made sure to not make me bored. Well, some of this credit also goes for the author who made this book with, apparently, true enthusiasm.
I recommend this book for anyone who is interested in animal interaction, as well as those who seek breakthroughs and revolutionary findings, although the new generation might find some of the ideas discussed in the book as "dah".
Pleasurable listen
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Delightful, insightful and entertaining
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animal intelligence
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Wonderful look into intelligent animals
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very thought provoking
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Any additional comments?
Great arguments for intelligence of animals, when judge from animal perspective. Loads of examples and stories. Nothing really new, except for perspectives sake. Humans think animals should be rated from a human point of view. Wrong! Narrator is one of my favorites! Very warm and easy on ears.What he said!
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Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?
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Amazing
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