Review

Rating: 3/10

Ok, I wasn’t able to finish this book; I made it 2/3 of the way through before giving up. The problem, as with so many popular science books, is about 2 pages of information padded to make a 300 page book. I’m not sure what the target audience is here. A *huge* part of the book is spent trying to convince the reader that other animals have emotions and empathy like humans. I personally can’t think of anyone I know who doesn’t believe this, and even if there were, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be in the target audience of the book.

Anyway. On the plus side, I did learn one surprising thing: although certain primates can learn how to open a door to get food by watching another open the door, it’s not enough if they just see the door open by itself. I guess I figured that the primates would have learned ‘how the door works’ by watching it open, but it seems they are really empathizing with the other animal.

I think this has an interesting implication: I predict that humans will have ‘mirror neurons’ for not just their limbs, but also for common devices, such as opening doors etc. (whilst primates unfamiliar with those tasks won’t.)