Book Review: Animal Wise by Virginia Morell

Dommy: Once in a while, i will allow another animal on my bed.

Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures by Virginia Morell. A very moving narration of wild and domesticated animals.

Did you know that...

• ants teach.. yes teach...
• how fish can feel pain.. 
• earthworms make decisions
• laughing rats love to be tickled (ok...but i am not tickling any rats here)
• dogs and wolves are very different
• and chimps grieve

Animals do think and they have feelings. If you have been spending a considerable amount of time studying animals or your own pets, you will know that they have feelings and a lot of intelligence.

I loved the part where she wrote

On bonding with adult dogs: “The researchers discovered that even adult dogs living in rescue shelters rapidly form attachments to people; it took a mere thirty minutes of interaction between a person and an adult shelter dog for the dog to begin forming a bond.”

Her question on "how should we treat these other emotional, thinking creatures?" at the epilogue for all of us. My view on life on earth is changed forever after reading this book. Thank you Virginia.

I shall not give too much away on why this Animal Wise is unusual.

A very facinating book that every pet/animal lover would enjoy reading. It provides a very interesting window on the intelligence of these creatures.

This book was just launched on the 26th February 2013.

A glimpse at the incredible praise that ANIMAL WISE has garnered: 

“You will take a journey to the center of the animal mind.”
– Temple Grandin, author of Animals in Translation and Animals Make Us Human 

“Why is it that until very recently, many scientists claimed that animals can’t think?  Every pet owner knows better, and Virginia Morell is our champion.”
– Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of The Hidden Life of Dogs

“These animals have incredible minds.  Now thanks to Morell they have a voice.  I love this book.  It makes me even prouder to share this Earth with our non-human kin.”
– Jennifer S. Holland, author of Unlikely Friendships

“Anyone who reads this book will be changed forever in their view of life on earth.”
– Richard E. Leakey, FRS, Stony Brook Professor of Anthropology and author of The Sixth Extinction

Photo Credit: Michael McRae, 2012

Virginia Morell is a prolific contributor to National Geographic, Science, and Smithsonian, among other publications. She is also the author of Ancestral Passions, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; Blue Nile; coauthor, with Richard Leakey, of Wildlife Wars.

She currently shares her life with an Collie named Buck. 

Virginia Morell on Facebook, you can visit Facebook.com/AnimalWiseBook. 
You can also take the ANIMAL WISE quiz here.
(Shhhhhh... I scored terribly)

Disclosure:
The book’s publicists from Random House sent me a free review copy. I was NOT compensated in any way for this review.