cognition

Book review – Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death

7-minute read
keywords: ethology, philosophy, psychology

The Virginia opossum is one of nature’s glorious weirdos. This North American marsupial will play dead when feeling threatened: she will fall over paralysed, eyes and mouth wide open, turn her tongue blue, drop her body temperature and heart rate, and, for good measure, drool, pee, poop, and excrete a foul-smelling green goo from her anal glands, all at the same time. “Playing” dead rather undersells it. Having just reviewed How Animals Grieve, this is the second of a two-part review exploring how animals experience and understand death, a topic studied by comparative thanatology. This young discipline sits somewhere at the intersection of ethology and comparative psychology, though associate professor Susana Monsó is instead a philosopher. With Playing Possum, she has written an exceedingly interesting book that is as accessible to a general audience as it is relevant to specialists. In the process, she convincingly argues that an understanding of death is likely very widespread in nature, but also that comparative thanatology has a whole lot of growing up to do.

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Book review – A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness

9-minute read
keywords: evolutionary biology, neurobiology, philosophy

The nature of consciousness is one of the hardest problems in biology. What exactly is it? Where did it come from? And are non-human animals conscious? Philosophers and scientists range from ascribing consciousness to all life (biopsychism), or even all matter (panpsychism), to attributing it exclusively to humans. Seemingly beyond the purview of empirical science due to its subjective nature, there is a lack of “intuitively attractive solutions” (p. xiii). In the opinion of Walter Veit, an assistant professor in philosophy, that just will not do. In this slim but advanced-level book, he outlines a mightily interesting thesis of how consciousness could have gradually evolved, which aspect of it likely appeared first, and why we urgently need to step away from taking human consciousness as our yardstick.

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Book review – What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories, and Personalities of Bees

7-minute read
keywords: cognitive science, entomology, neurobiology

The collectives formed by social insects fascinate us, whether it is bees, ants, or termites. But it would be a mistake to think that the individuals making up such collectives are just mindless cogs in a bigger machine. It is entirely reasonable to ask, as pollination ecologist Stephen Buchmann does here, what a bee knows. This book was published almost a year after Lars Chittka’s The Mind of a Bee, which I reviewed previously. I ended that review by asking what Buchmann could add to the subject. Actually, despite some unavoidable overlap, a fair amount. Join me for the second of this two-part dive into the bee brain.

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Book review – The Mind of a Bee

9-minute read
keywords: entomology, ethology, neurobiology

It is tough being a social insect. When people are not trying to exterminate you, they might marvel at the collectives you form, but does anybody think much of you, the individual? Leave it to Lars Chittka, a professor in sensory and behavioural ecology, to change your views. The Mind of a Bee is a richly illustrated, information-dense book that explores a large body of scientific research, both old and new. Chittka’s book was followed not a year later by Stephen Buchmann’s What a Bee Knows. This, then, is the first of a two-part dive into the tiny brains of bees and the remarkably advanced behaviours that they show.

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Book review – If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals about Human Stupidity

7-minute read
keywords: cognitive science, evolutionary biology, psychology

From the absurdist Terry-Gilliam-style cover to the provocative subtitle to my enjoyment of his previous book Are Dolphins Really Smart?—I had high hopes for this book. Justin Gregg is an Adjunct Professor lecturing on animal behaviour and cognition, and a Senior Research Associate with the Dolphin Communication Project, betraying his particular interest in marine mammals and animal language. Holding forth the provocative idea that our intelligence is a burden rather than a boon and that animals do it better, If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal combines well-aimed philosophical potshots at human exceptionalism with a gentle introduction to animal cognition. A blissfully easy read, this book had me in stitches more than once.

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Book review – When Animals Dream: The Hidden World of Animal Consciousness

7-minute read
keywords: ethology, neurobiology, psychology

If trying to figure out what goes on in the minds of animals when they are awake seems hard, how much harder is it not to figure this out when they are asleep? Do animals even dream? David M. Peña-Guzmán, a professor of humanities and liberal studies, thinks they do. When Animals Dream delves into both empirical research and philosophy to explore whether animals dream, what they might be dreaming of, and what the philosophical and moral implications of this are.

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Book review – From Extraterrestrials to Animal Minds: Six Myths of Evolution

8-minute read
keywords: evolutionary biology

If you have read up on palaeontology, you will likely have encountered the name of Cambridge palaeobiologist Simon Conway Morris. Known initially for his work on the invertebrates of the Burgess Shale, he has since also written on both astrobiology and convergent evolution, which he explored in The Runes of Evolution, his first book with Templeton Press. Always ready for some good-spirited provocation and mischief, he here dissects six supposed myths of evolution, providing a thought-provoking mix of ideas. I found as much to agree as to disagree with.

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Book review – We Know It When We See It: What the Neurobiology of Vision Tells Us About How We Think

6-minute read

Understanding the eye is only the first step to understanding how we see. Vision is as much about perceiving, which means understanding how the brain works. We Know It When We See It is the swansong of neuroscientist and ophthalmologist Richard Masland, who passed away in December 2019. His research career spanned over four decades and he was lauded internationally for his work on retinal neurobiology. In this book, his love for teaching shines through, and it was a pleasure to join him on one last trip through the neurobiology of vision.

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Book review – Neanderthal Language: Demystifying the Linguistic Powers of our Extinct Cousins

7-minute read

Neanderthals have enjoyed quite the renaissance in the last decade or so, with research attributing skills and capacities to them once considered uniquely human. One of the most contested claims in this arena is language. Since (spoken) language does not fossilise, nor leave material traces in the archaeological record, the case for Neanderthal language relies on indirect evidence. In this book, linguist Rudolf Botha takes a hard-nosed look at why this matter is so controversial and offers a framework to properly tackle it.

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Book review – Metazoa: Animal Minds and the Birth of Consciousness

7-minute read

In 2016, the scuba-diving philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith wrote Other Minds where he explored the mind of the octopus—I reviewed it right before reading this book. Its bestseller status, including translations in more than 20 languages, was not entirely unpredictable. Octopuses are a sexy topic. Four years later, he explores animal minds further with Metazoa, with the tour now also including sponges, corals, shrimp, insects, fish, and mammals. Godfrey-Smith convinced me he is no one-trick pony when it comes to writing a good book, though this one is more cerebral than its predecessor.

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