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A review by shanaqui
Aesop's Animals: The Science Behind the Fables by Jo Wimpenny
informative
medium-paced
3.0
Aesop's Animals has a simple premise: the fables of Aesop are well-known, and shape our perception of many different animals. How much truth is in them? Each chapter has the same format: quickly tell one of the fables, and then dig in. Does the named animal do this thing? Is it even capable of this thing? And if it isn't, what animal can we replace it with?
I found this a liiiittle disappointing in that it's very focused on figuring out how clever animals are. Even the chapter about caching behaviour, for example, proved to be about animal cognition (can they think ahead, etc).
I do get that that's because it's trying to dig into the why of animal behaviour, rather than the what, and I'm not actually sure if an interesting book could've been written that was purely descriptive... but still, I found it got a bit same-y.
All that said, I found it really readable, and did pick up some interesting facts I didn't know.
I found this a liiiittle disappointing in that it's very focused on figuring out how clever animals are. Even the chapter about caching behaviour, for example, proved to be about animal cognition (can they think ahead, etc).
I do get that that's because it's trying to dig into the why of animal behaviour, rather than the what, and I'm not actually sure if an interesting book could've been written that was purely descriptive... but still, I found it got a bit same-y.
All that said, I found it really readable, and did pick up some interesting facts I didn't know.