Customer Reviews

Thinking Animals: Animals and the Development of Human Intelligence

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The original edition of this book was published by The Viking Press in 1978 (I know, because I was its editor), and a very important book it is. I'm delighted to see it back in print, because it got little attention when it first appeared. Few scientists then believed in the importance of animals to the development of human intelligence; now the subject of animal intelligence itself is taken far more seriously, and I'm certain that Paul Shepard's work made a significant contribution to this change.

...in forty years of relentless reading. We have all seen the evidence of subjects driven mad by sensory deprivation. We know that the health of an individual is tied up with the health of the community. Shepard gives us a glimpse of the myriad ways in which the mental health of our species is tied up with the interspecies conversations that produced our consciousness. To vastly oversimplify his synthesis of anthropological, biological, and cultural sources, Shepard's thesis is that the only argument that can possibly save wild animals and the environments upon which they survive is this: that without them we will destroy that heritage of which we are most proud: our human consciousness. The arguments are expanded in his other work, and I keep meaning to read them-as soon as I have absorbed this one. I've been rereading it for 20 years.