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Cover of Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

  • 340 pages · about 6 hours
  • First published 2016
  • 11 editions

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1 About this book

Hailed as a classic, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? explores the oddities and complexities of animal cognition―in crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, chimpanzees, and bonobos―to reveal how smart animals really are, and how we’ve underestimated their abilities for too long.

Did you know that octopuses use coconut shells as tools, that elephants classify humans by gender and language, and that there is a young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University whose flash memory puts that of humans to shame? Fascinating, entertaining, and deeply informed, de Waal’s landmark work will convince you to rethink everything you thought you knew about animal―and human―intelligence.

Good for readers who want: nature, psychology, and science.

  • Psychology, comparative
  • Comparative Psychology
  • Animals
  • Nature
  • Psychology
  • Cognitive Neuroscience & Cognitive Neuropsychology
  • Science
  • Life Sciences

2 About Frans de Waal

1948–2024

Franciscus Bernardus Maria de Waal (29 October 1948 – 14 March 2024) was a Dutch-American primatologist and ethologist. He was the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Primate Behavior in the Department of Psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, director of the Living Links Center at the Emory National Primate Research Center, and author of numerous books including Chimpanzee Politics (1982) and Our Inner Ape (2005).

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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