- Discussion on Animal IntelligenceTess' Backyard, Kitchener, ON
We'll focus this discussion around the book Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smarts Animals Are? by Frans de Waal. Here's the publisher's blurb about it:
Hailed as a classic, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? explores the oddities and complexities of animal cognition—in crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, chimpanzees, and bonobos—to reveal how smart animals really are, and how we’ve underestimated their abilities for too long. Did you know that octopuses use coconut shells as tools, that elephants classify humans by gender and language, and that there is a young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University whose flash memory puts that of humans to shame? Fascinating, entertaining, and deeply informed, de Waal’s landmark work will convince you to rethink everything you thought you knew about animal—and human—intelligence.
There's also a great classic Radiolab episode that is a fun listen - funny people debating who the smartest animal is: https://radiolab.org/podcast/worlds-smartest-animal
Put any other resources you have to share in the comment section for the event.