A book to make you think

I have a new favorite book that many might find surprising. We've all heard the expression "stop and smell the roses". Well this book, Beyond Words, What Animals Think and Feel, by Carl Safina, will make you do something just like that. Only you won't be smelling roses, you'll be learning a new way to appreciate our cousins in the animal kingdom. Beyond Words takes a scientific look at all animals but focuses mainly on four types, elephants, wolves, ravens and mammals that live in the sea. I cannot begin to go into all the amazing information this book presents. I can only touch on a bit of it. First of all there is the important concept of anthropomorphism. That is assigning human emotions to other animals eg. the fox acted sly; the dog was dumb. Neither was the fox sly, it was just behaving like a fox and its behavior in a human would be called sly, and the dog is not at all dumb. It knows everything it needs to know to be a dog. It is called dumb because it doesn't obey all the commands of its master (who's the dumb one?) Beyond Words is a mind blowing look into the behavior of different animals that will help the reader understand and appreciate all of the wonderful creatures that surround us everyday.