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Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel 1st Edition

by
Carl Safina (Author)
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Carl Safina (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars 237 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-0805098884
ISBN-10: 0805098887
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 480 pages
  • Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; 1 edition (July 14, 2015)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0805098887
  • ISBN-13: 978-0805098884
  • Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.6 x 9.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (237 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #23,664 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsBeyond Words is a fascinating look into the world of animals! This book had me in awe of so many animals & their feelings!
By I'd rather be at the Beach TOP 500 REVIEWER on July 15, 2015
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
This book is written in a MUCH MORE scientific style than I thought it would be. However, I learned so much more about what I thought I knew about animals. I knew that dogs show happiness, anger, aggressiveness, playfulness, excitement and even grief, but to discover that even elephants, whales, wolves, crows (very smart), fish and many other species show many of these feelings was very surprising. I'm certainly convinced that more animals have "human feelings" than we thought when I read about older baby elephants throwing temper tantrums when their moms decide to wean them! Reading about an entire herd of elephants "joyfully" frolicking was something I never expected. When the Alpha Wolf in a pack "pretends" to lose at play-wrestling with wolf pups, that clearly shows feelings toward the little guys. We learn about two wolves, one year-old Triangle and his older sister, who are weakened with Mange. They go out hunting but are met by three hostile wolfs from another pack. The hostile wolves take down the sister, but Triangle comes running back to distract them time after time. "Self-sacrifice" by a wolf? Isn't this clearly love? This is a fascinating book that had me in awe, had me laughing at their antics and in tears at their losses. I highly recommend it.
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5.0 out of 5 starsDo You Ever Look Into The Eyes of an Animal and Find There More Than You Expected?
By oceanshaman on July 15, 2015
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Carl Safina often did and if you are reading this review, I am thinking that you have too.

This book is written beautifully, but that should not imply that it is an easy read. However, it is a MUST READ if you love animals.
Jacques Cousteau said that we protect what we love. We are also engaged in a journey of becoming with that which we love.
Carl Safina's BEYOND WORDS will guide and accompany on your journey of loving animals.
This book contains fascinating information about animals, but this book is a vision quest.
Be forewarned by the dimensioned and nuanced style.You will lick the dust of an elephant's breath from your teeth, lean into the salt spray of arcing orca dives, measure your heartbeats by wolf paws padding a wild terrain.
The book is long. You will persist. There is treasure here. You sense that. Stay the course.
No vision quest worth it's glimpse at great mysteries ever gives up before the epilogue & footnotes.
I am part Native American. I thank Carl for helping us see all our relations more truly.
This is a book for a journey of such importance, it may take the rest of your life. Don't worry, a wondrous assemblage of species and those humans who love and protect them will be with you every step of the way.
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4.0 out of 5 starsanimals are individuals too!
By Arnold VINE VOICE on August 3, 2015
Format: Hardcover
As biologist Carl Safina shows in Beyond Words, many animals have complex emotional and intellectual lives. Safina invites readers to view animals as individuals who have their own “personalities” (“who, not what”). The chimps and dolphins in Beyond Words are even more interesting than anything in the Uplift novels - and they happen to be real!

I’d read Jeffrey Moussaieff Mason and Susan McCarthy’s When Elephants Weep years ago, as well as Cynthia Moss’ books about the Amboseli elephants, so was already on board with the idea that many animals have complex social lives. So, to some extent, I was probably not Safina’s target audience as he spends a considerable amount of time trying to convince readers that animals are individuals. Nevertheless, I found myself in awe at all that we’d learned over the past few decades about animal behavior. Safina does an excellent job conveying the “personality” of individual animals, noting how they react to humans and putting their emotional responses into words that we can understand.

Beyond Words is divided into four parts. Three sections focus on elephants, wolves (including dogs), and dolphins (particularly orcas). Researchers have spent decades studying individual behavior amongst these animal groups, so Safina can tell the stories of individual animals in a way that he simply couldn’t with giant squid or even many lesser primates. Reading about orcas who interacted with different humans differently based on the human’s personality was humbling in that they seem to have mastered social skills I and many other people lack.

Although Beyond Words isn’t limited to these charismatic megafauna, I would have preferred if the book had spent less time with the “usual suspects.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsShould be mandatory for every human being on the planet to read.
By Snoosh on September 14, 2015
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
This book is one that I literally think every human being on the planet without exception should have to read. When you realize what we humans are doing to the world, building and drilling and polluting and killing every last thing we can get our hands on without any restraint or limit, it's of great concern, or should be. This book shows, by observation and fact, that animals are not "just animals" (whatever that means anyway), or things to be used to make money, but thinking, feeling creatures, not human but not all that different. If you think otherwise, you are simply wrong and possibly resistant to the inconvenient truth, in which case I hope you can't vote or reproduce. The book follows a few animals and clearly shows how animals think thoughts, develop relationships, experience fear, terror, pain, depression, mourning for the dead, etc. Yeah, inconvenient but clearly and factually true. We can't avoid killing animals for food and self-defense and such, but there are some animals that we kill for "sport" or fun (Cecil the lion…), for money (poachers for ivory), and there are events in some countries that actually torture animals as if it's a celebration, etc. We've hunted animals to extinction, we are fishing the oceans out and catches diminish, and we hack up and fragment wild areas without realizing (or perhaps troubling ourselves to care about) the implications. So much for our higher intelligence and awareness. Animal lovers are not little old ladies with thirty cats, they simply see and understand what is there.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 starsThe deep intelligence of elephants, wolves and orcas.

Wonderful information here that gave me new insight into specific animals. The book is divided into 4 sections: 1) elephants, 2) wolves, and 4) orca whales and dolphines. Read more

Published 1 day ago by Ralphe Wiggins
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

everyone should read this

Published 2 days ago by Bruce K. Wylie
5.0 out of 5 starsI love this book and the patience and devotion that it ...

I love this book and the patience and devotion that it took to pull it together.
Read it and enjoy the journey

Published 5 days ago by G. Wakefield
5.0 out of 5 starssensitive treatment of animals

Was waiting for a price break on this and grabbed it as a gift to an animal lover.

Published 8 days ago by kid
5.0 out of 5 starsThe Great World of Animals

Most outstanding book ive read on this subject. All animal lovers or the merely curious. this is truly outstanding. i've owned and raised dogs, horses, cats, birds of varied kind. Read more

Published 13 days ago by Ray Walker
5.0 out of 5 starsTakes you into the real world of several highly organized ...

Takes you into the real world of several highly organized species (like elephants and wolves). Gives insight into what it is these animals do and why.

Published 13 days ago by Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsBest book of the year!

I originally read this book in my public library and enjoyed it so much I decided it was a title I needed to add to my personal collection. Read more

Published 15 days ago by Kay
5.0 out of 5 starsYou Can't Hear This Often Enough

Purchased as a gift for my niece and she loved it. I had just read the Carl Safina interview in The Sun and was impressed with his way of thinking.

Published 15 days ago by Been There
5.0 out of 5 starsWonderful book.

Such an interesting book about animal behavior. Well written, wonderful perspective.

Published 18 days ago by JancieJ
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

amazing book

Published 18 days ago by Marcos Jose Torrigo Costa

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