Inside Cover Blurb
- What separates your mind from the mind of an animal? Maybe you think it's your ability to design tools, your sense of self, or your grasp of past and future - all traits that have helped us define ourselves as the pre-eminent species on Earth. But in recent decades, claims of human superiority have been eroded by a revolution in the study of animal cognition.
- Take the way octopuses use coconut shells as tools, or how elephants can classify humans by age, gender, and language. Take Ayumu, the young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University who demonstrates his species' exceptional photographic memory.
- Based on research on a range of animals, including crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, whales, and, of course, chimpanzees and bonobos, Frans de Waal explores the scope and depth of animal intelligence, revealing how we have grossly underestimated non-human brains. He overturns the view of animals as stimulus-response beings and opens our eyes to their complex and intricate minds.
- With astonishing stories of animal cognition, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? challenges everything you thought you knew about animal - and human - intelligence.
- Frans de Waal has been named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People. The New York Times bestselling author of Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? (Granta, 2016) and Our Inner Ape (Granta, 2005) among many other works, he is the C. H. Candler Professor in Emory University's Psychology Department and director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
Amazon Book Reviews
- 'If you are at all interested in what it is to be an animal, human or otherwise, you should read this book'
→ Guardian
- '[This] guide to animal intelligence will help us to adjust our human-centricity a little bit... De Waal sets out not only to explore the topic of animal intelligence [...] but also to investigate why we are so very resistant to accepting the fact that other species share some of our mental traits. In the process, he explores the history of such biases, as well as the research that has challenged them... Are We Smart Enough? is like the lunchtime lecture you might go to... story-driven and personable, so you feel the narrator is there with you, affably offering insights that expand your understanding'
→ Literary Review
- 'This is what science writing should be, and so rarely is: confident but humble; rigorous but suffused with wonder. De Waal writes with the simplicity that comes only with profound understanding. He's a true scientist - free of the reductionist fundamentalism that suffocates so much modern science. The book is an exhilarating but genial journey through evolutionary aeons, across the species barrier, and into the surprisingly companionable worlds of non-humans'
→ Charles Foster, author of Being a Beast
- 'When a judge says that a young criminal behaved like an animal he means it as an insult. If he read Frans de Waal's splendid new book he would discover that in reality it is a compliment'
→ Desmond Morris
- 'Compellingly recounted by De Waal, who has a long and distinguished career in animal psychology... This book makes plain [that] we can see plenty of ourselves in our animal cousins too'
→ Raphael Hogarth, The Times
- 'A lively, punchy and rigorous review of 20 years of academic studies of animals' mental lives, written by one of the most prominent thinkers in the field... It is the half-century-long failure of science and empathy that motivates de Waal's fascinating book... De Waal demolishes the pedestal on which we have placed humanity... Rich in detail... [it is] an important corrective to human exceptionalism'
→ James McConachie, Sunday Times
- 'Frans de Waal's fascinating book is an eye-opening record of the many ways in which animals regularly display their own particular kinds of smartness'
→ Daily Mail
- 'De Waal draws on his own experience and a vast array of scientific papers to support his ideas. His book is rich and digressive... It is certainly a significant contribution to the debate'
→ Philip Hoare, New Statesman
- 'Admirable... [de Waal] offers intimate knowledge of the history of the field together with a vision of its prospects. He skilfully weaves together intellectual history, anecdote[s] about leading figures, accounts of empirical discoveries, philosophical critique, and the occasional well-aimed and perfectly weighted slap. Combining wisdom, lightly worn expertise and an undiminished capacity for wonder, de Waal is not afraid to let a shard of temper show now and again... His reflections over a long and distinguished career will enlighten the general reader... a remarkable book'
→ TLS
- 'So, are we 'smart enough to know how smart animals are?' The question will occur to you many times as you read Frans de Waal's remarkable distillations of science in this astonishingly broad-spectrum book. I guarantee one thing: readers come away a lot smarter. As this book shows, we are here on Planet Earth with plenty of intelligent company'
→ Carl Safina, author of Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel
- 'Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? will completely change your perceptions of the abilities of animals. This book takes the reader on a fascinating journey of discovery into the world of animal problem solving'
→ Temple Grandin, author of Animals in Translation and Animals Make Us Human
Book Comment
Granta Books; 1st edition (1 Sept. 2016). Hardback.
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2025
- Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)