Reviews - The Secret Life of Animals: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discovering a Hidden World

I found this book easy to read, and learned some facts and observances that I hadn’t know before. I would not say I was completely bowled over though, about halfway through I found I was struggling with how the book was written and wasn’t sure about finishing. I had previously read Wohlleben’s book ‘The Hidden Life of Trees’ which I loved and picked this book up expecting to enjoy it on the same level. In this book I really liked that he made the suggestion of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ in the sense that we should give our fellow animals the benefit of the doubt when it comes to what they can feel. It is something I personally find important and always strive to be as empathetic to other lives as possible.

While scientific research is very focused on being completely objective which as a method I believe has faults I did find that at times Wohlleben would present research and then just disregard it in a way that almost came across as him just deciding for himself what he thought is correct. I also found the use of words and phrases like ‘Ouch!’ or ‘Aha!’ to be a bit of an immature or lazy way of expressing things. Often I would also notice, sometimes at the end of chapters or after extensively discussing a point he would suddenly bring in a new point or reference to another animal, write a couple of sentences and then carry on to something new without full explanation. I found this quite frustrating.

At the point around halfway through when I mentioned I was struggling I was discussing the book with someone and expressed I almost felt this book was rushed to further the success from ‘The Hidden Life of Trees’. As if he author or publishes were saying what else can we do now, how about a book on animals and how they feel. Upon finish this book and reading the acknowledgments I was disappointed to see a thanks express for the publishers who suggested a book about animals, unfortunately I felt this indicate a level of truth to how I felt.

Although I have criticisms I would not necessarily recommend someone avoid reading this book (we should always take time to form our own opinions on things) but I would perhaps suggest another book on the subject to read beforehand, Carl Safina’s ‘Beyond Words’. Safina writes from behavioural observation with reference to scientific research, he puts this across expressing about the reasoning for scientific research being objective. He himself a maintains a level of objectivity by not expressing that he can say for certain how something might be but all the while you get a sense of his admiration and love for the feelings and thoughts of other animals. It is a beautifully written book that really altered some of my viewpoints and thought me a lot, while being gripping yet easy to read. I would probably recommend it as a starting point into this subject over Wohlleben’s ‘The Inner Life of Animals’.

jo_doth_read's review against another edition

4.0

Wonderful read. I did not find this one to be quite as compelling as The Hidden Life of Trees (you must read this book), but that one is hard to beat! Peter Wohlleben is a wealth of ecological knowledge.