What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions?

Is it all right to urinate in front of animals? Do apes really know how to ape? Do animals see themselves as we see them? What interests rats in experiments? Why is it said that cows don’t do anything? This book poses twenty-six questions that stretch our preconceived ideas about what animals do, what they think about, and what they want. This abecedary explores amusing and surprising adventures about animals and their involvements with researchers, farmers, zoo-keepers, handlers, and more. In reading these funny stories one might wonder whether animals have senses of humor of their own: they seem to take perverse pleasure in creating scenarios that unsettle the greatest of experts, that oblige them to come up with new and riskier hypotheses, and always lead them to note that animals are not nearly as stupid as thought … These delightful and incredible stories oblige us, along the way, to engage in both ethology and philosophy. After reading this book, one won’t look at one’s dog in the same way again.