Beyond Words by Carl Safina

I wanted to know what they were experiencing, and why to us they feel so compelling, and so-close. This time I allowed myself to ask them the question that for a scientist was forbidden fruit: Who are you? Weaving decades of field observations with exciting new discoveries about the brain, Carl Safina's landmark book offers an intimate view of animal behavior to challenge the fixed boundary between humans and nonhuman animals. In Beyond Words, readers travel to Amboseli National Park in the threatened landscape of Kenya and witness struggling elephant families work out how to survive poaching and drought, then to Yellowstone National Park to observe wolves sort out the aftermath of one pack's personal tragedy, and finally plunge into the astonishingly peaceful society of killer whales living in the crystalline waters of the Pacific Northwest. Beyond Words brings forth powerful and illuminating insight into the unique personalities of animals through extraordinary stories of animal joy, grief, jealousy, anger, and love. The similarity between human and nonhuman consciousness, self-awareness, and empathy calls us to re-evaluate how we interact with animals. Wise, passionate, and eye-opening at every turn, Beyond Words is ultimately a graceful examination of humanity's place in the world.

Just wonderful. Safina really delves deep into the ‘who' of animals; there are so many animal anecdotes here that are just jaw-dropping (my favourite one involved a tiger stalking his human enemy for months; I'm also very unlikely to ever kill another wasp because SOME OF THEM CAN RECOGNISE YOUR FACE : ). Although he might be taking things a little bit too far sometimes (for example when arguing that wolves' fear of humans could be the outcome of a cost-benefit calculation and not say, an evolutionary repulsion to our smell) his main point is fair and important: that it's just as scientifically wrong to anthropomorphise animals as it is to do the opposite (objectify?).Safina definitely has a huge beef with animal scientists who seek the ‘theory of mind' in animals, then proceed to hail it as proof of their lack of sentience when the animals invariably fail their terribly designed experiments. He spends several incisive (and highly amusing) chapters on discrediting their efforts. It makes for an entertaining read but I felt like he never really gets to the definition of the ToM that actually matters – of it being the opposite of solipsism, so: not just of recognising that others have minds, but acknowledging that those minds have the capacity to feel that is similar to one's own (this surely takes years to develop even in humans, if it develops at all). These are all minor (and possibly entirely my own) issues in a deeply satisfying whole.A word of warning though: this book will leave you in a world of sadness. The author is a conservationist and conservationists, like climatologists, don't have much to be optimistic about. Large parts of the book are heart-breakingly sad and a proof that humanity truly is the cartoonish villain of the natural world. Though the book ends on a positive note, it's a very brief and forced-sounding positive note that is the opposite of reassuring.