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Hi people! Because you loved my Top 5 Neuroscience Books I wanted to make another one for you!
This one is about animals, because I always loved them.
Since I was a kid, I became fascinated by all their behaviors.
That's why I read tons of books about them, from stories to pure academic books.
So in this article, I want to recommend some of the books that completely changed my life.
I tried to make a top 5 including several species and also for beginners.
So I hope you like them!
Now to my Top 5!
5. Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans
Birds are way smarter than you think, especially crows.
Despite this, crows were always thought to be related to bad luck or other bad calamities like death.
In this book, John Marzluff and Tony Angell tell us about their research on crows during their careers, showing us that we need to reconsider our view of our feathered friends.
For example, did you know that crows can solve problems, show grief, and awareness, and even be delinquents?
In this book, you will learn all about how intelligent crows are including:
- Insight
- Delinquency
- Passion and Grief
- Awareness
When I finished this book, I became even more interested in these birds.
They are truly intelligent!
4. Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel — Carl Safina
Carl Safina is a well-known writer about animals.
If you haven't heard of him before, I kindly invite you to look at his interviews and books. He dedicated a career to disseminating all about animals.
This book is absolutely beautiful.
Carl wrote it in 3 main sections, dedicating each one to a particular species:
- Wolfes
- Elephants
- Orcas
In each part, he not only tells us about their incredible behaviors and intelligence but also their sensitive stories.
I almost cried reading this book.
Carl did great work combining both scientific facts with personal beliefs and stories about these animals.
You will learn a lot about them and how humans affected their lives drastically.
After finishing it, I admire animals way more than before.
And you probably will as well.
3. Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? — Frans de Waal
Moving on, I want to recommend this masterpiece.
Frans de Waal is a famous and prestigious primatologist who not only did decades of research into animal behavior (particularly primates) but also disseminated science for the general public.
This book is a solid critique of anthropocentrism (the idea that we humans are the center of the universe) and anthropomorphism (the idea that we attribute human-like behaviors to other animals).
The key problem, for him, is that we were studying animals wrongly, without actually knowing their behaviors.
If interested, I wrote about this topic inspired by this book in another post:
What I liked about this book is that Frans wrote a very personal opinion on these topics, and also gave an opinion on how we humans can reconsider our coexistence with other animals.
Reading this book, you will learn:
- Ethology, the science that studies animal behavior in natural environments/contexts.
- Animal behavior of several species.
- Animal Intelligence.
- How we study animals.
- How we need to reconsider our coexistence with other animals.
Truly amazing book! A must-read for this 2024!
2. Deep Thinkers: Inside the Minds of Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises
This book has changed my life radically. It was really hard to not put this one in my Top 1.
I remember when I was working as a housekeeper and listening to a podcast from Big Biology about cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises).
When discussing how they experience their world, they mentioned the concept of "Umwelt". This word completely changed the way I see animals.
Okay, back to the book!
This masterpiece is all about cetaceans! From the relationship whales with humans to their intelligence and social behaviors.
I wanna make a particular mention of the design of this book:
IS ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL.
There's not too much text on the pages, and you have amazing photos and graphics that will make you learn way easier.
Here's a list of some topics discussed in the book:
- Human association with cetaceans
- The cetacean brain
- Cetacean communication
- Cetacean culture
- Us and Them: how humans and cetaceans coexist.
- And way more!
If you love whales, you should start reading this right now!
1. An Immense World — Ed Yong
In the top 1 of this article, we have my favorite lecture of 2023: An Immense World by Ed Yong.
If you want a more detailed review of this book, I already dedicated a full article:
Ed Yong wrote a masterpiece of communicating how animals experience their world.
Remember the concept of Umwelt in my previous recommendation? Well, Umwelt is the center of this book. And that's why is my Top 1.
Ed writes about how we used to think that animals perceive and experience the world in a similar way to us.
However, the reality is that there's a lot of diversity in perceptions in the animal kingdom.
In this book, you will learn how different animals perceive and experience:
- Vision
- Smell
- Touch
- Taste
- Electric Fields
- Magnetic Fields
- And more
I think 2 awesome points make this book amazing:
- Ed didn't focus on one animal per chapter but on multiple ones. So you will learn a lot from a lot of species!
- Ed dedicated a full chapter to talking about how humans are contaminating other Umwelten
I'm sure that your life will change after reading this book, as it did with me.
Conclusion
These are 5 of the books that changed how I see animals, and I hope they can help you as well!
Since joining Medium, I wanted to show how some books, ideas, animals, and research have impacted my life.
If you're interested in more book recommendations, I wrote another top 5 for Neuroscience Books:
Thanks for reading, and have an awesome day! Take care of animals!
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