Customer Reviews

The Animal In You: Discover Your Animal Type and Unlock the Secrets of Your Personality

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

the short test in the book kept us in hysterics. this a great way to get a large group arguing. All in all, the book is illuminating and fun. We almost all loved it.

When I took the short easy test I was sceptical but after reading what it said about my animal personality, I was very amazed at how dead-on it was. This book is useful to anyone who wants to understand their personality better.

I personally don't care much for horoscopes and zodiac signs because they are so vauge as to describe people just based off of numbers, but this is different. Animals do have personalities so theres a level of understanding there as you can connect with your animal personality. The one thing I'd hafta say about this book is that theres 45 animals in it, and theres at least 850 in the world, so for people like my digital graphics and animations teacher who's a turtle personality (which isn't listed in the book), nothing really matches up in the book with himself. That might be the reason why some people took the test and still haven't figured out what they match.
Gawd, this book is great! I keep plenty of notecards with the book since they fill up fast with numbers, and I get alittle snippy about how people hold the book since its not holding up so well as paperback, but (...)its a great way to figure out the person next to me. *wags fox tail* the personality matches up almost to the letter, and I was rather amused to find out my boyfriend was a wolf (although not suprized), and my closest friends are carnivoure personalities.

Interesting book. We had a great time testing everyone. While almost everyone agreed with their animal personality, only my weasel brother-in-law had any objections.

This book is two-thirds pure entertainment and one-third insightful social commentary. Author Feinson's premise is that human culture is populated in much the same way that the animal kingdom is laid out. That is, humans mimic the predator and prey relationships of the other members of the animal kingdom in both proportion and passion. Thus we end up with large proportions of human counterparts of sheep, deer, and cottontails (prey), and relatively few examples of lions, wolves and crocodiles (predators).

Blending the selfish allure of the daily horoscope with the voyeuristic pleasures of watching animal courtship on a nature show, "The Animal in You" offers a chance to "discover your true animal type and unlock the secrets of your personality." By means of a short and easy self-test, and a somewhat intimidating, but obviously thorough, eighty-some pages of tables, you can quickly find out if you're an owl or a dolphin, a weasel or an elephant. Each animal personality offers a brief overview of the genuine animal, it's human counterpart, and short sections on careers, relationships, advice and a few amusing examples of celebrity examples. It's no stretch to learn that Liberace was a peacock, Woody Allen a snake, and Michael Jordan a giraffe.

While Feinson obviously has good background in animal behavior and dedicates some serious discussion at the beginning of the book to understanding the relationship between man and animals, and to translating animal behavior to our homo sapiens agenda, it is clear than he does not intend us to take this book too seriously. Once this is understood, the book is a great deal of fun. Once one finds out one's own animal brother or sister identity, the real fun begins by taking the test for one's spouse, boss, friends (and enemies)! I always knew my boss was a warthog and my brother-in-law a weasel, but I was surprised to find out my wife was a cottontail - not the best mate for a bat like myself.

A great casual c! offee table book to leave out at parties, "The Animal in You" might have been better served being published in hardcover - after only two weeks on my desk at the office, it's cover is "dog-eared" and the test-page covered in "hen-scratches". This book serves as a reminder of our inextricable link to our animal brothers and sisters and offers the reader an entertaining and often surprisingly revealing glimpse into our own "nature".

As a fulltime professional psychic reader and party psychic for over 37 years, I have had ample opportunity to see that we are all animals at heart. Some of us are eagles (hey, I didn't get this shnozz by accident), and some lions (I am an eagle with a lion's body) and some sea otters/prairie dogs (my wife for instance) and some sea lions (my professionally dancing water-sign daughter) and some titmouses and some badgers and some weasels --

Remember that last blind date, ladies?

And even more clearly (which, frankly, could have been brought out better in this book, along with the astrological side in general; yet the book is so revolutionary I still give it a "five") most of us are a combaintion of various animal consciousnesses evidenced in a progressive heirarchy of ascendency, dominanace, and trying-to-work-it-all-out-together personality evolution(which is where the Eskimos and the Australian aborigines got their totems from -- showing a multiplicity of animal energies working together in every life and social organism -- kind of like notes and chords in a musical composition of the soul -- which is the astrological motif after all).

(Animal evolution is not so different from spiritual evolution, is it, spiraling between prey and predator, land, sea, and air?)

I for example am Eagle, Owl, Lion, and Teddy Bear (or, in the latter instance, other animals who are more innocent, cuddly, and cute) in that order. Some people are the reverse -- nice on the outside, tough on the inside. Merely being able to tell if someone is naturally a Predator (lions, weasels, tigers, snakes, and Republicans, for example) or an Herbivore (cottontails, sheep, horse, bison, donkeys, or Democrats -- the political take is of course mine, not Mr. Feinson's) can be very helpful in your dealings with others. (And isn't it interesting how prey-predator motifs can apply to relationship and sexual and business and social and cultural and religious dynamics of all types?).

Thus, what i would have liked to see -- and I give you fair warning, I may write more about this later -- is the association of animal appearances and indentifications with eastern and western astrology:

Including an awareness that in astrology, the Year of the Pig can look and act a little bit like a pig often with a piggie nose (like Year of the Pig Members Marie Osmand, Julie Andrews, Zero Mostel, Ernest Hemingway, and Jean Harlow) -- and be pigheaded if you try to turn them into prey, goring you with those obstinate victim-playing tusks. And in western astrology Scorpio members, for example, often strongly resemble the Scorpio-ruled creature the eagle (Indira Gandhi -- and Mohandas Gandhi a Libra with Scorpio rising -- Murray Abraham, Teddy Roosevelt -- with lots of owl in his case -- Edith Head, or a baby chickadee eagle like Goldie Hawn or Leonardo DiCaprio). This goes with the general Bird Consciousness Mr. Feinson so astutely elucidates.

Indeed, some of us bird types prefer the air to earth, just try to catch us when you want earthly commitment or a narrow perspective!

We are indeed all animals -- and plants and minerals and angels -- as life is all one. And understanding our animalian roots helps us understand our personalities and behaviors as so-called "humans" in this lifetime (And don't tell me most of our current politicans and world leaders are all that human! -- I see lots of vultures and warthogs and snakes and wolfowiczes amongst them!)

Mr. Feinson pulls no punches in this department either. He calls a warthog a warthog. (If i called someone a warthog -- as I have been tempted -- at a Psychic Party, I would never work in this biz again!) And while I am not sure that aninmal natures can be digitalized from test questions -- although he seems to have done as good a job as could be done with this approach -- I nonetheless HIGHLY reommend this work as a real thought-provoker and consciousness-enhancer and just plain hoot.

it is frankly, one of the most thought-provoking and spiritually-evolutionary books I have ever read. Thank you, Mr. Feinson. (And you can quote me on that in the sequel, with maybe a chapter on astrology I would love to consult with you on! @;oD)

Bottomline: Serious psychologists should study this subject -- if they weren't so owlishly myopic and serpentinely self-protective.

Ah well ... life can be a beast.

This book was a very fun book for a person who is very social or goes to alot of bars, but if you are a "lone wolf" this book will only entertain you only so much.

It is a fun book, but you might sell it to Half-Price books when you are done with it.


P.S. I'm a cottontail rabbit. :>

This was a great party book, or even something to read and find new things out about yourself id recomend it to anyone

This is great! I took the test in the book and I turned out to be my favorite animal -- a dolphin! (I surf and ski, but I don't have sex quite THAT often!) My boyfriend is a sea-lion, so I guess we're quite compatible. What a cool book.

The Animal in You is a refreshing and delightfully entertaining journey into understanding your own and others' personalities. The book provides a brief intruiging self diagnostic test and then applies animal behavioral typology to identify and describe your specific animal personality. This light and rather whimsical approach to personality theory provides a fresh look at human interaction that is filled with creative insight into how we relate to each other as "social animals." In short, The Animal in You is a MUST read and is far more fun and revealing than an astrological forecast -- this "wolf" loved it!