Comments on: Book review – Becoming Wild: How Animals Learn to be Animals

By: Book review – Alfie & Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe | The Inquisitive Biologist

Thu, 16 May 2024 15:13:19 +0000

[…] Carl Safina needs little in the way of introduction, having written the lauded Beyond Words and Becoming Wild, and a score of earlier books. For me, he ranks right up there with modern science popularisers […]

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By: Book review – Talking Heads: The New Science of How Conversation Shapes Our Worlds | The Inquisitive Biologist

Fri, 08 Mar 2024 14:43:32 +0000

[…] This bridges nicely to the second cognitive reality birthed by our conversations: culture. In a few places, O’Mara reaches back to his opening gambit about amnesia and asks you to imagine that you, or your society, became amnesiacs overnight. How would you pass on any information and customs to the next generation? You could not. This is more than just a goofy thought experiment: O’Mara only has to point out the archaeological record which is full of signs and symbols that have become uninterpretable and illegible. They have, in the words of neuroscientist Erik Hoel, become epistemologically inaccessible to us. The take-home message is that, for culture to survive over time, you need living, remembering people who engage in conversations. Though O’Mara largely sidesteps any comparisons to animals in this book, I feel it would be remiss of me not to mention the hotly debated topic of culture in animals, with answers ranging from “no, they don’t” to “yes, they do“. […]

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By: Book review – Through a Glass Brightly: Using Science to See Our Species as We Really Are | The Inquisitive Biologist

Fri, 10 Jul 2020 10:16:38 +0000

[…] The second part of the book is where Barash turns his gaze inwards, towards science itself. This is the more technical half, focusing on anthropology, psychology, and evolutionary biology. He gives a masterful recounting of the birth of ethology as a biological discipline and how it led to the idea that animals lack complex cognition, making humans unique – something a new generation of researchers is hard at work dismantling. Think of Marc Bekoff (The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy – and Why They Matter), Frans de Waal (Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? and my review of Mama’s Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Teach Us about Ourselves) and Carl Safina (Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel and Becoming Wild). […]

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By: Book review – Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel | The Inquisitive Biologist

Fri, 10 Jul 2020 10:14:11 +0000

[…] voices breaking down this outdated taboo. In preparation of reviewing Safina’s new book Becoming Wild, I decided I should first read his bestseller Beyond Words. I have to issue an apology here: […]

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