Virginia Morell discusses Animal Wise

We speak to Virginia Morell about her fascinating new book Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures

Can you tell us a little about your book Animal Wise and what makes it different from other books about animals or animal intelligence?

I think a key difference is that my book is also about the scientists who are exploring animal minds and emotions. Hal Herzog, an animal researcher who wrote Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat, sent me a kind note. He said, “You’ve turned the question of ‘what does it mean to be a bat’ on its head. You’ve asked ‘what does it mean to be an animal behaviorist?'"

I’d never thought of my book in exactly those words, but Hal is right. I wanted to show who the scientists are who investigate the minds and emotions of animals; what draws them to their ‘study’ animals; what’s the relationship between the researcher and his/her animals. So as well as looking at exciting new discoveries about animal minds, Animal Wise is also about the kind of people who ask extremely difficult questions — such as "what is it like to be a fish?" or "do elephants grieve?" and how these researchers then go about finding the answer.

Animal Wise

10 amazing facts about animal intelligence from Animal Wise by Virginia Morell - in stores today!

#1. Great Bowerbirds are artists. Australian bowerbirds do not just randomly set out their piles of decorations but rather arrange them to create the illusion of perspective, a technique often used by artists when painting landscapes. When researchers rearranged the male birds’ displays the birds quickly restored every item to its proper place.

#2. Sharks have been on earth for more than four hundred million years.

#3. Crows and rooks create and use different types of tools from things they find. For example, crows can bend straight wires into hooks to get at food, and rooks have demonstrated a basic understanding of physics by employing the principles of water displacement to better access food.

#4. Fish not only feel pain but can suffer, experience emotions and are self-aware. In the past, researchers believed that fish had very simple brains, however new studies have found that this is not the case.