The Animal Mind: Profiles of Intelligence and Emotion

by Marianne Taylor, Joel Sartore (Illustrator), Melissa Groo (Illustrator)

Nature author Marianne Taylor’s The Animal Mind is a fascinating exploration of animal intelligence and emotion, with thought-provoking essays, surprising insights, and breathtaking images by leading photographers Joel Sartore, Melissa Groo, Peter Delaney, and others.

We are only beginning to understand the ways in which the animal mind is as complex as our own. A prairie dog’s vocal language is now the most sophisticated ever decoded, but their unique jump-yip poses as many questions as answers. Gorillas use sign language to describe past events to researchers, so does this mean they ruminate and relive their lives? When an ant looks in a mirror to see a dab of blue paint on its head, they try to clean it off, proving the ant is self-aware like us.

The Animal Mind profiles 60 animals as it explores instances of remarkable cognition, communication, consciousness, and culture in the animal kingdom. Full of beautiful portraits and in-depth studies showing these behaviors in action, The Animal Mind offers an illuminating roadmap to animal intelligence.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Animals

240 pages, Hardcover

Published April 2, 2024

Reviews

[Dylan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Am I the first person reviewing this on Goodreads? Anyways, reading this book was an awesome experience. It’s very aesthetically pleasing and the little blurbs about various animals never exceed more than 3 pages, which is a pretty unique format. I learned a lot of new things, some so novel I’m almost even skeptical of (ie. the stories about humpback whales and bluestreak cleaner wrasses). I would appreciate little superscripts for all of the references so I could follow them easier, but at this point, I’m a dilettante of this information so I am going to assume the author did her part to maintain integrity. Also, I’m beginning to think that lions are lame, I wish the cover title was of a chimpanzee or something cooler. I spontaneously picked this book up at a local book store which made the reading experience even better, super enjoyable read.

[Nanthini]

Amazing insight into the cognitive part of animals. I have not even completed the book, but find it well written and explained. Yesterday it provided material for me to talk about to my neighborhood kids and jut with one animal behaviour explained, there was rapt attention and so much discussion on it.
Hope it reaches many people.

[Frozono López · Rating 2 out of 5]

No profundiza demasiado en etología y tiene poco texto. Se limita a presentar a un animal con una foto muy grande y muy bonita y de una a tres páginas hablando de alguna curiosidad relacionada al comportamiento del mismo, resultando en alguna supuesta explicación o teoria. A mi no me gustó, pero es buen libro de "curiosidades" animales o para iniciación.

[Josemaria Laguinge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Está genial y es un gran libro de colección siendo mi única crítica que otro estilo de narración o formato diferente a libro podría sentarle mejor. Hubiera amado tener este libro durante mi juventud.

No es nada muy complejo siendo sincero y eso no está mal, si esperás algo más avanzando estas con el libro equivocado.