A review by kittyg
Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal

3.0

I listened to the audiobook for this one and whilst it’s a bit of a dry read at times and I didn’t love the narrator, I did think some of the studies which we look into within the book were very interesting. This is quite a science-y book with a lot of references to fieldwork, experiments and how humans misjudge animals when they set up experiments with human bias at the centre. There’s a lot to consider as a reader, but I didn’t think it was a particularly engaging read as it flits around topics fairly fast and doesn’t tend to dive too deeply or allow you as a reader to connect with the animals in the tests, instead it’s more factual and lays out all the different sets of experiments and their results. An interesting read for sure, but probably not a book I’d return to. I think I prefer a little more that I can relate to of dive deep into. 3*s