Jonathan Balcombe > Quotes

“The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. —Eden Phillpotts Just”
― Jonathan Balcombe, What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins

“Science likes to measure things, to test hypotheses and collect data. Until quite recently science wasn’t testing hypotheses about animal feelings. From the time Charles Darwin wrote his last book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) to about the time Neil Armstrong left footprints on the moon nearly a century later (1969), prevailing scientific dogma denied animals their hearts and minds. A nonhuman animal was viewed as merely a responder to external stimuli. The idea that a walrus made decisions, or that a parakeet felt emotions, was considered unscientific.”
― Jonathan Balcombe, Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals

“Animals are as intelligent as they need to be. If a particular mental ability—such as learning to recognize other individuals, or to identify predators—is important to survival and reproduction, then it will be favored evolutionarily. But nature doesn’t waste energy building brains just because it can. All else being equal, an organism with a smaller brain should have a survival advantage over one with a larger brain, because the “brainier” one must consume more energy to sustain its gray matter.”
― Jonathan Balcombe, Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals

“They have the options of grating their teeth in their jaws, grinding additional sets of teeth lining their throat, rubbing bones together, stridulating their gill covers, and even—as we’ll see—expelling bubbles from their anuses.”
― Jonathan Balcombe, What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins

“As individuals, animals are wonderfully complex and sensitive. As members of social groups, they are more interesting still. How animals interact with one another is the inevitable product of a planet populated by numerous life forms, each seeking a fruitful living. When an organism is responsible only to him or herself, there is no need for rules or restraints. As part of a social network, it’s a different story. As highly social creatures, we soon learn the value of conducting ourselves in ways that keep things running smoothly for us, and for others. Other social species abide by rules and regulations.”
― Jonathan Balcombe, Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals

“It is well known that animals respond poorly to living conditions that do not stimulate them mentally or physically. Rats, mice, monkeys, and other mammals confined for long periods in laboratory cages where they have little or no opportunity to engage in such natural behaviors as foraging, hiding, nest-building, or choosing social partners develop neurotic behaviors. Termed “stereotypies,” these behaviors involve repetitive, functionless actions sometimes performed for hours on end. Rodents, for example, will dig for hours at the corners of their cages, gnaw at the bars, or perform repeated somersaults. These “behavioral stereotypies” are estimated to afflict about half of the 100 million mice currently used in laboratory tests and experiments in the United States.16 Monkeys chronically confined to the boredom, stress, and social isolation of laboratory cages perform a wide range of abnormal, disturbing behaviors such as eating or smearing their own excrement, pulling or plucking their hair, slapping themselves, and self-biting that can cause serious, even fatal injury. Severely psychotic human patients display similar behaviors. If you’ve seen the repetitive pacing of caged big cats (and many other smaller animals) at the zoo, you’ve witnessed behavioral stereotypies.”
― Jonathan Balcombe, Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals

“The problem in our relationship with animals is that our treatment of them hasn’t evolved to keep up with our knowledge.”
― Jonathan Balcombe, Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals

“Humbling as it may be, for all our vaunted brain power, humans emerge as nothing special in the sensory sweepstakes. Our senses of vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch are middling, at best.”
― Jonathan Balcombe, Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals

“What we know about fishes is only a tiny slice of what they know.”
― Jonathan Balcombe, What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins

“El campo científico moderno de la ecología cognitiva acepta que la inteligencia se modula según las necesidades de supervivencia que un animal debe afrontar durante su vida cotidiana.”
― Jonathan Balcombe, What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins

“her act of removing them from their element to suffocate symbolizes the suffering they endured at our hands, and her extraordinary sympathy, expressed at such a tender age and still felt today, reminds us of the infinite potential for humans, when we are aware, to do good in the world.”
― Jonathan Balcombe, What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins

“El conocimiento es sumamente poderoso: apuntala la ética y espolea revoluciones.”
― Jonathan Balcombe, What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins

“photos of their gaping, rotting bodies stretching to the horizon remind me that our subject's name is synonymous with it's own demise, for the word fish means both the animal and the act of catching it”
― Jonathan Balcombe, What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins

“the word fish means both the animal and the act of catching it”
― Jonathan Balcombe, What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins

“photos of their gaping, rotting bodies stretching to the horizon remind me that our subjects name is synonymous with its own demise, for the word fish means both the animal adn the act of catching it”
― Jonathan Balcombe, What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins

“No wonder American philosopher Jeff Lockwood observes, “If absence makes the heart grow fonder, humans should be head-over-heels in love with nature.”
― Jonathan Balcombe, Super Fly: The Unexpected Lives of the World's Most Successful Insects

“El objetivo es mostrar que los peces son seres individuales cuyas vidas tienen un valor intrínseco, al margen de la utilidad que tengan para nosotros como, por ejemplo, fuente de obtención de beneficios o entretenimiento.”
― Jonathan Balcombe, What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins

“In exchange for the male being the ultimate couch potato, the female never has to wonder where her mate is on a Saturday evening. It turns out that some males do indeed amount to little more than an appendage.”
― Jonathan Balcombe, What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins