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This is not a scientific book (despite the author’s claims). Bekoff cherry picks data and shoves anecdotes down your throat and it’s gaggingly saccharine. While I do believe animals have emotions, he goes way extreme. I wouldn’t mind if he supported his data well but his arguments are so lazy, repetitive and not convincing. A lot of his stories don’t even really demonstrate the point he’s going for well.
It would be interesting if he delved into the complexities of animal behavior - the good and the ugly aspects, but every animal is a loving sensitive angel and it’s rather boring.
It would be interesting if he delved into the complexities of animal behavior - the good and the ugly aspects, but every animal is a loving sensitive angel and it’s rather boring.
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
fast-paced
Bekoff includes interesting observations of animal ritual, communities, and individual behaviors that provide insight into empathy and emotion of our fellow creatures.
It's sad that Bekoff's writing is quite repetitive, because if the text was better edited I would clearly give it 4 or 4.5 stars.
The idea of the book is essential to our modern society: we are treating animals as objects, denied of their rights as beings that feel, but I feel sometimes the point is weakened by Bekoff's insistence in repeating some explanations and ideas that he literally just mentioned a couple of pages before. So it gets a tad tiring.
Still, as a biologist myself, I appreciate Bekoff's attempt to defend the very same animals that compose our 'study objects' (yes, that's how they are called in our field). I just hoped it was better constructed.
The idea of the book is essential to our modern society: we are treating animals as objects, denied of their rights as beings that feel, but I feel sometimes the point is weakened by Bekoff's insistence in repeating some explanations and ideas that he literally just mentioned a couple of pages before. So it gets a tad tiring.
Still, as a biologist myself, I appreciate Bekoff's attempt to defend the very same animals that compose our 'study objects' (yes, that's how they are called in our field). I just hoped it was better constructed.
An excellent case for treating animals as sentient beings. It's strange that it is not universally accepted that animals have emotional lives. The anecdotes reveal a good deal and the author is clearly well-versed in the subject, but he does an excellent job of making the prose accessible to anyone willing to read it.
I'm not exactly sure what I expected from this book. Whatever it was, I don't think I got it. The author seemed to spend as much time explaining his branch of science and what it was about as he did examining the proof (if you can call it that) of animal emotions. In the end, he didn't convince me that all zoos are inherently evil, nor to renounce meat in my diet.