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Inside the Animal Mind: A Groundbreaking Exploration of Animal Intelligence
In the bestselling tradition of When Elephants Weep and Dogs Don't Lie About Love, Inside the Animal Mind is a groundbreaking exploration of the nature and depth of animal intelligence.While in the past scientists have refused to acknowledge that animals have anything like human intelligence, a growing body of research reveals otherwise. We’ve discovered ants that use leaves as tools to cross bodies of water, woodpecker finches that hold twigs in their beaks to dig for grubs, and bonobo apes that can use sticks to knock down fruit or pole-vault over water. Not only do animals use tools–some also display an ability to learn and problem-solve.Based on the latest scientific and anecdotal evidence culled from animal experts in the labs and the field, Inside the Animal Mind is an engrossing look at animal intelligence, cognitive ability, problem solving, and emotion. George Page, originator and host of the long-running PBS series Nature, offers us an informed, entertaining, and humanistic investigation of the minds of predators and scavengers, birds and primates, rodents and other species. Illustrated with twenty-four black-and-white photographs, the book is the companion to the three-part, hour-long show of the same name, hosted by Page.
320 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
December 1, 2022
A Difficult Read
I’m not a scientist and as a layperson, I found this book to be a difficult read. Very interesting topic.
I’m not a scientist and as a layperson, I found this book to be a difficult read. Very interesting topic.
January 30, 2025
LTHE COMPANION TO THE THREE-PART SERIES ON ‘NATURE’
Author George Page wrote in the Preface of this 1999 book, “As the executive editor, host, and narrator of the ‘Nature’ series on public television, I have spent many wonderful hours and days observing animals in the wild… I’ve often wondered, ‘Are these creatures “thinking” all the while? Without language as we know it, HOW are they thinking?’ For almost 100 years, the behaviorist tradition of psychology … has argued that these animals have no ‘minds’ at all… that any belief to the contrary is ‘folk psychology’---blatant anthropomorphism… Since we cannot get inside the animal’s mind… and since the animal cannot report what’s going on… in a ‘language’ we can readily understand---all we have left are guesses and speculation… with no provable facts. But does this reductive hypothesis make any sense outside the laboratory?...
“One final question: What difference does it make?... We humans… want to know. Just as important, our ideas about animal minds and emotions influence far-reaching questions of ethics and politics. If we… determine that animals think consciously and possess the full range of ‘human’ emotions---if their pain is therefore also ‘suffering’---on what ethical ground do we support… the marine theme parks, whose performing cetaceans are, in the final analysis, enslaved in what are to them puddles? We become hard-pressed to condone animal experimentation, and a growing number of people decide that they cannot justify eating meat… Personally, I very much like the idea that my kinship with the other living creatures of the earth might be much greater than our cultural and scientific heritage has led us to believe… like them, I am an animal and that many of the characteristics that I have so often tossed off as being ‘just a part of human nature’ may, in fact, be aspects of our shared animal natures… The answers matter… in terms of the ancient quest for our own identity. How else can we define the human animal without knowing how we are alike and … different from other animals?...
“[T]here years ago, we began working on the three-part ‘Nature’ series to which this book is the companion, addressing directly the issues of animal thinking, animal emotions, and animal consciousness… In the past decade there has been an explosion of scientific, philosophical, and even quasitheological papers and books explaining various aspects of the problem… I try to walk the narrow line between making the complex themes and scientific research clear and accessible, but without oversimplifying.”
He comments on Jane Goodall’s studies of chimps’ ‘tool making/use': “both behaviors have been challenged as indicating not much beyond the minimal adaptation of a natural behavior. Doubters point out that chimps strip the leaves from branches and vines all the time. They also poke objects into holes for no apparent reason. But the fact that certain ‘instinctive’ behaviors are utilized in the termite fishing does not preclude the presence of insight.” (Pg. 107)
He notes about studies of apes, “Critics … [point out] that the chimpanzees never perfect the stacking of boxes. They never seem to catch on to the problems posed, and even after years they stack at random until they hit upon a configuration that will hold them up… Other researchers have noted that chimps swing sticks almost automatically in all sorts of circumstances, and put sticks together and stack crates while playing around. So what was going on here was trial and error, though not of an obvious sort. Clever, maybe, but not what we want to call genuine insight.” (Pg. 110)
He reports, “I was fascinated to learn that pigeons cannot be trained to peck in order to avoid a shock. They can be trained to hop onto a treadle in order to avoid this shock, but they cannot be trained to hop onto this treadle in order to obtain food. Do these results make sense? Yes, definitely. Pigeons eat by pecking, and they flee danger by jumping or by flying away. Ask them to switch these two instinctive behaviors… and they are in trouble. The same behavioral prejudices hold for lab rats… Jumping for food is not in their innate repertoire, and no amount of learning can compensate for that lack.” (Pg. 114)
He observes, “Critics of vervet communication… make much of the fact that vervets do not adjust their signaling based on the response of their listeners… The critics argue that this failure of the communicators to modify their behavior is just one more indication of the limits of animals’ language cognition. If animals do have a conscious intent to communicate in a way similar to our own intent, they would be responsive to the effect of that communication, as we are. Because they are not aware, apparently, they are not truly communicating.” (Pg. 129)
Of Irene Pepperberg’s experiments with her gray parrot named Alex, he explains, “Alex has a hundred-word vocabulary, divided into basic categories: everyday objects, qualifying adjectives, simple actions such as ‘give,’ and concepts such as ‘none,’ ‘same,’ and ‘different.’… Pepperberg tells us, "Alex has coined exactly one new word: ‘bannery’… instead of learning the label ‘apple’ he insisted on saying ‘bannery.’" When you think about it, the apple … tastes a little bit like a banana. So this linguistic elision… made sense.” (Pg. 132)
He states, “I go along with the philosopher Daniel Dennett, who completely agrees with [Noam] Chomsky that language is indeed the … sine qua non of the highest reaches of consciousness. BUT, Dennett argues, and the cognitive ethologists agree, the fact that we might not be able to construe the workings of, say, a vervet monkey’s brain as ‘thoughts,’ as we understand them, does not mean them monkey is not thinking… The animal may be thinking differently with what amounts to a different language in a completely different [world view], and we would make a mistake by expecting it to answer OUR questions in OUR language.” (Pg.143)
Of ‘ape language’ experiments, he reports, “Critics of all these projects see intentional or unwitting cuing… or mimicry, or straightforward ‘associative labeling.’ They point out that many signing ‘sentences’ may actually mean, to the animal, ‘If I do this, then I get an apple.' They point out that almost all signing by the apes is restricted to official training sessions, with not much impromptu use of the symbols; that an inordinate number of the signs and strings consist of requests for food; that any mistake is rationalized as a ‘novel meaning.’” (Pg. 145-146)
He says, “Jane Goodall has seen and tried to help all too many young chimps who have come to her Gombe center after unknown traumatic experiences in childhood… Goodall asks why we shouldn’t infer emotion when this inference seems warranted, just as I infer your anger or sadness when the situation makes this emotion not only plausible but likely?... When one of the chimps at the Gombe center jumps up and down and squeals in apparent pleasure in just the way a human child does, Goodall believes we should conclude that this pleasure is not just ‘behavior’ but that it is felt as pleasure by the chimpanzee as well. When a young chimp reacts with alarm at a new pop-up toy, just as a human infant might, we should draw the conclusion that the chimp is alarmed… Anything less, to Goodall’s mind, is simply ‘illogical.’” (Pg. 186-187)
He recounts, “In 1984, the famous gorilla Koko made headlines when her pet kitten, who was called ‘All Ball,’ slipped out a doorway and was run over by a car. Koko cried when Francis Patterson informed her of the death. Three days later, Koko signed ‘cry’ when asked if she wanted to talk about the kitten. Five years later, when shown a picture of herself and All Ball, she signed ‘that bad frown sorry inattention.’ (Before the unexpected death of All Ball, Koko had signed ‘trouble, old’ when asked why gorillas die, and she signed ‘comfortable hole bye’ when asked where gorillas go when they die.” (Pg. 198)
He summarizes, “We do not have easy answers concerning birds… Irene Pepperberg is pretty sure that when Alex … says ‘I’m sorry,’ which he does quite often, and with good reason---he is not really sorry at all. He will use the phrase to defuse what he correctly reads is annoyance at his behavior. Pepperberg, however, does not sense any genuine embarrassment and contrition, and the bird will repeat the annoying behavior almost instantaneously.” (Pg. 209)
He also notes, “hiding may be a clever form of deception, but it is not evidence that an animal understands ‘I am hiding.’ Among primates, however, apparently purposive deception is everywhere.You would almost say that it’s a way of life.” (Pg. 236)
He concludes, “I am convinced that we have good reasons for inferring from our own experience that consciousness in animals is SOMETHING LIKE our own consciousness. I feel certain that it feels like something to the elephant, certain that it feels something very different to be the bat, and I believe it might well feel like something to be the bee---but I cannot PROVE it.” (Pg. 213)
This book will be of keen interest to anyone looking for an broad overview of these topics.
Author George Page wrote in the Preface of this 1999 book, “As the executive editor, host, and narrator of the ‘Nature’ series on public television, I have spent many wonderful hours and days observing animals in the wild… I’ve often wondered, ‘Are these creatures “thinking” all the while? Without language as we know it, HOW are they thinking?’ For almost 100 years, the behaviorist tradition of psychology … has argued that these animals have no ‘minds’ at all… that any belief to the contrary is ‘folk psychology’---blatant anthropomorphism… Since we cannot get inside the animal’s mind… and since the animal cannot report what’s going on… in a ‘language’ we can readily understand---all we have left are guesses and speculation… with no provable facts. But does this reductive hypothesis make any sense outside the laboratory?...
“One final question: What difference does it make?... We humans… want to know. Just as important, our ideas about animal minds and emotions influence far-reaching questions of ethics and politics. If we… determine that animals think consciously and possess the full range of ‘human’ emotions---if their pain is therefore also ‘suffering’---on what ethical ground do we support… the marine theme parks, whose performing cetaceans are, in the final analysis, enslaved in what are to them puddles? We become hard-pressed to condone animal experimentation, and a growing number of people decide that they cannot justify eating meat… Personally, I very much like the idea that my kinship with the other living creatures of the earth might be much greater than our cultural and scientific heritage has led us to believe… like them, I am an animal and that many of the characteristics that I have so often tossed off as being ‘just a part of human nature’ may, in fact, be aspects of our shared animal natures… The answers matter… in terms of the ancient quest for our own identity. How else can we define the human animal without knowing how we are alike and … different from other animals?...
“[T]here years ago, we began working on the three-part ‘Nature’ series to which this book is the companion, addressing directly the issues of animal thinking, animal emotions, and animal consciousness… In the past decade there has been an explosion of scientific, philosophical, and even quasitheological papers and books explaining various aspects of the problem… I try to walk the narrow line between making the complex themes and scientific research clear and accessible, but without oversimplifying.”
He comments on Jane Goodall’s studies of chimps’ ‘tool making/use': “both behaviors have been challenged as indicating not much beyond the minimal adaptation of a natural behavior. Doubters point out that chimps strip the leaves from branches and vines all the time. They also poke objects into holes for no apparent reason. But the fact that certain ‘instinctive’ behaviors are utilized in the termite fishing does not preclude the presence of insight.” (Pg. 107)
He notes about studies of apes, “Critics … [point out] that the chimpanzees never perfect the stacking of boxes. They never seem to catch on to the problems posed, and even after years they stack at random until they hit upon a configuration that will hold them up… Other researchers have noted that chimps swing sticks almost automatically in all sorts of circumstances, and put sticks together and stack crates while playing around. So what was going on here was trial and error, though not of an obvious sort. Clever, maybe, but not what we want to call genuine insight.” (Pg. 110)
He reports, “I was fascinated to learn that pigeons cannot be trained to peck in order to avoid a shock. They can be trained to hop onto a treadle in order to avoid this shock, but they cannot be trained to hop onto this treadle in order to obtain food. Do these results make sense? Yes, definitely. Pigeons eat by pecking, and they flee danger by jumping or by flying away. Ask them to switch these two instinctive behaviors… and they are in trouble. The same behavioral prejudices hold for lab rats… Jumping for food is not in their innate repertoire, and no amount of learning can compensate for that lack.” (Pg. 114)
He observes, “Critics of vervet communication… make much of the fact that vervets do not adjust their signaling based on the response of their listeners… The critics argue that this failure of the communicators to modify their behavior is just one more indication of the limits of animals’ language cognition. If animals do have a conscious intent to communicate in a way similar to our own intent, they would be responsive to the effect of that communication, as we are. Because they are not aware, apparently, they are not truly communicating.” (Pg. 129)
Of Irene Pepperberg’s experiments with her gray parrot named Alex, he explains, “Alex has a hundred-word vocabulary, divided into basic categories: everyday objects, qualifying adjectives, simple actions such as ‘give,’ and concepts such as ‘none,’ ‘same,’ and ‘different.’… Pepperberg tells us, "Alex has coined exactly one new word: ‘bannery’… instead of learning the label ‘apple’ he insisted on saying ‘bannery.’" When you think about it, the apple … tastes a little bit like a banana. So this linguistic elision… made sense.” (Pg. 132)
He states, “I go along with the philosopher Daniel Dennett, who completely agrees with [Noam] Chomsky that language is indeed the … sine qua non of the highest reaches of consciousness. BUT, Dennett argues, and the cognitive ethologists agree, the fact that we might not be able to construe the workings of, say, a vervet monkey’s brain as ‘thoughts,’ as we understand them, does not mean them monkey is not thinking… The animal may be thinking differently with what amounts to a different language in a completely different [world view], and we would make a mistake by expecting it to answer OUR questions in OUR language.” (Pg.143)
Of ‘ape language’ experiments, he reports, “Critics of all these projects see intentional or unwitting cuing… or mimicry, or straightforward ‘associative labeling.’ They point out that many signing ‘sentences’ may actually mean, to the animal, ‘If I do this, then I get an apple.' They point out that almost all signing by the apes is restricted to official training sessions, with not much impromptu use of the symbols; that an inordinate number of the signs and strings consist of requests for food; that any mistake is rationalized as a ‘novel meaning.’” (Pg. 145-146)
He says, “Jane Goodall has seen and tried to help all too many young chimps who have come to her Gombe center after unknown traumatic experiences in childhood… Goodall asks why we shouldn’t infer emotion when this inference seems warranted, just as I infer your anger or sadness when the situation makes this emotion not only plausible but likely?... When one of the chimps at the Gombe center jumps up and down and squeals in apparent pleasure in just the way a human child does, Goodall believes we should conclude that this pleasure is not just ‘behavior’ but that it is felt as pleasure by the chimpanzee as well. When a young chimp reacts with alarm at a new pop-up toy, just as a human infant might, we should draw the conclusion that the chimp is alarmed… Anything less, to Goodall’s mind, is simply ‘illogical.’” (Pg. 186-187)
He recounts, “In 1984, the famous gorilla Koko made headlines when her pet kitten, who was called ‘All Ball,’ slipped out a doorway and was run over by a car. Koko cried when Francis Patterson informed her of the death. Three days later, Koko signed ‘cry’ when asked if she wanted to talk about the kitten. Five years later, when shown a picture of herself and All Ball, she signed ‘that bad frown sorry inattention.’ (Before the unexpected death of All Ball, Koko had signed ‘trouble, old’ when asked why gorillas die, and she signed ‘comfortable hole bye’ when asked where gorillas go when they die.” (Pg. 198)
He summarizes, “We do not have easy answers concerning birds… Irene Pepperberg is pretty sure that when Alex … says ‘I’m sorry,’ which he does quite often, and with good reason---he is not really sorry at all. He will use the phrase to defuse what he correctly reads is annoyance at his behavior. Pepperberg, however, does not sense any genuine embarrassment and contrition, and the bird will repeat the annoying behavior almost instantaneously.” (Pg. 209)
He also notes, “hiding may be a clever form of deception, but it is not evidence that an animal understands ‘I am hiding.’ Among primates, however, apparently purposive deception is everywhere.You would almost say that it’s a way of life.” (Pg. 236)
He concludes, “I am convinced that we have good reasons for inferring from our own experience that consciousness in animals is SOMETHING LIKE our own consciousness. I feel certain that it feels like something to the elephant, certain that it feels something very different to be the bat, and I believe it might well feel like something to be the bee---but I cannot PROVE it.” (Pg. 213)
This book will be of keen interest to anyone looking for an broad overview of these topics.
May 12, 2021
I couldn't have been more turned off by the approach the author took in this book. He obnoxiously suggests that clear opinions should be treated as obvious and irrefutable facts, and seems to suggest it would be ridiculous to think otherwise. In the introduction, the writing switches back and forth from feeling like a poor high school paper to someone speaking directly to you (imagine someone you can't get out of a conversation with at a party). Page mocks a number of well respected scientists and at times even sciences themselves in the hopes that the reader will almost blindly agree with him. The immediate and large emphasis on religion in the introduction didn't sit right for me for the subject matter at hand.
Fortunately, as the book went on the author did seem to calm down a bit, with more rare outbursts of obvious and extreme bias. I was mostly interested in reading about the various experiments that have been done by other researchers, and these tended to be interesting, even if I often disagreed with the conclusions Page came to from them.
When reading a book about any science field, I'm generally looking for an author who wants to provide me facts and various notions of what they may lead to, not someone grasping for straws to convince me of their preconceived notion.
There is a lot of interesting research in the book (and I am sure there has been much more done in the last 20+ years) and I don't want to downplay the importance or validity of that research, but I don't think this book is the best champion for that research or its cause.
Fortunately, as the book went on the author did seem to calm down a bit, with more rare outbursts of obvious and extreme bias. I was mostly interested in reading about the various experiments that have been done by other researchers, and these tended to be interesting, even if I often disagreed with the conclusions Page came to from them.
When reading a book about any science field, I'm generally looking for an author who wants to provide me facts and various notions of what they may lead to, not someone grasping for straws to convince me of their preconceived notion.
There is a lot of interesting research in the book (and I am sure there has been much more done in the last 20+ years) and I don't want to downplay the importance or validity of that research, but I don't think this book is the best champion for that research or its cause.
January 25, 2023
I was disappointed by the standard of proof offered.
I am sympathetic to the author's ideas, but too often found the chapters somewhat meandering and without a thrust line. To my taste, there is too much personal discussion in the book, and not enough exploration of modern research. I was hoping for better.
My conclusion: I am giving the book away :-)
I am sympathetic to the author's ideas, but too often found the chapters somewhat meandering and without a thrust line. To my taste, there is too much personal discussion in the book, and not enough exploration of modern research. I was hoping for better.
My conclusion: I am giving the book away :-)
March 12, 2019
A fascinating, entertaining and poignant book about animals and what it means to be conscious and self-conscious. The book is rich in both anecdotes and references to real research and is a sheer pleasure to read.
November 18, 2023
Couldn’t get through it… the writing style is not for me. Jumping around, disjointed, very hard to follow.
April 15, 2024
I learned a lot about ongoing research and notions about how animals think and respond. I look forward to hearing more in the future.
August 23, 2010
I've always been interested in how our vision of the world resembles or differs from say a lion or a whale. Animals are obviously very intelligent on different levels - and I enjoy reading of the ways they display this. This particular book gets into questions about whether animals can be said to have "language" or "consciousness" or awareness of themselves as individuals. Fascinating stuff. Well-written, I thought. I'm no scientist, so I had no basis from which to be critical of Page's conclusions, but very few conclusions could be had - more questions discussed than laid to rest, and that's okay. The main issue of all these questions would seem to be that if animals know and think and feel a lot more than we have traditionally given them credit for, they also have suffered far more at our hands than we language-spouting, conscious, self-aware human beings should ever have tolerated. We certainly haven't displayed much of our so-called superior intelligence here. (A really good novel on this topic is "The Plague Dogs" by Richard Adams, author of that classic "Watership Down".)
June 4, 2010
First off, I hate this author. I never made it far in his other books, because he just makes too many leaps, too early on. "Because of course it is" is not science! (And yet he tries to present it as such) However, this book was definitely better than the others. At least a good jumping off point to find other interesting studies. Less leaps, and when he does make a leap, he states that it is his opinion and it is not the only argument he uses to back his central points, unlike in his other books. He almost lost me in the first chapter, with a bunch of Christian crap, but he comes out of it. Still pretty sentimental, well-organized and overall interesting.
BTW, for some shameless self-promotion, if you like reading about animals, check out my blog on wildlife at http://backyardzoologist.wordpress.com/
BTW, for some shameless self-promotion, if you like reading about animals, check out my blog on wildlife at http://backyardzoologist.wordpress.com/
August 18, 2013
George Page is a journalist, not a researcher. Unfortunately, that does not save him from taking the posture of one who knows better. He dismisses whole fields of discourse with offhand remarks, for example: "Eventually behaviorism melded with the equally notorious sociobiology as formulated by E. O. Wilson." (p. 29) For an accessible yet scholarly exploration of animal cognition, I recommend Marc Hauser's "Wild Minds." Hauser is a scientist (albeit one who has fallen from grace for unethical data manipulation), who specializes in primate cognition. His writing is more lucid, and less affected. He addresses the same questions as Page, with an appreciation for subtle variaritions in the possible interpretations of evidence, which is lacking in Page's presentation. One comparison between the books: Page's bibliography is 3 pages long; Hauser's spans 30.
May 30, 2009
This was a really cool read, a sort of behaviorism vs. ethology comparison on the whole concept of not so much animal intelligence but animal consciousness. Frankly, it seems a moot point to me. I have family members that were UNconscious for an entire decade, thanks to pot and PTSD, and I'm willing to bet that there are a plethora of animals out there who can think'em into the ground. In any case, it's chock full of surprising, strange, occaisionally horrifying anecdotes,written very much in layman's terms, rather than psycho-speak, and wonderfully concise. (Thankyou, Mr. Page.) Thought-provoking. Enjoyed it immensely.
September 10, 2016
This is actually an excellent and fascinating exploration of consciousness. The book gives a readable overview of the scientific and philosophical debates surrounding the study of consciousness. Page explores these complex debates about consciousness in is not stuffy and overly-academic. The book has an excellent bibliography for those they would enjoy a deeper academic exploration of the consciousness debates.
The book expands on the subject of consciousness to explore if and how animals are conscious. This book is a heart-felt homage to the intelligence of our animal friends and relatives.
The book expands on the subject of consciousness to explore if and how animals are conscious. This book is a heart-felt homage to the intelligence of our animal friends and relatives.
February 13, 2013
George Page does an excellent job of balancing the anecdotal with the scientific studies. He not only provides excellent support for the argument of animal consciousness, he makes the reader think -and perhaps change their perspective- about how humans treat other animals and justify said treatment.
May 6, 2015
More based toward those readers who like a scientific frame of reference to their books rather than the general 'understanding your pet' purely anectodal ones so popular today. Very enjoyable as well as enlightening.
January 18, 2015
The book was a lot of citing examples from other books or from experiments done on animals. Cognition or consciousness? After reading about the experiment done on bats which involved removing their eyes, I really didn't care any more.
Read
August 29, 2010I only read 50 pages before I had to return this to the library…I plan to revisit it.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews