The Smartest Animals on the Planet

Succinctly written and sumptuously illustrated with photographs and diagrams, this appealing book is sure to fascinate the general reader and inspire the science student considering a career in animal behavior or cognition.
--Library Journal (starred review)

This compelling book is from a world authority in animal intelligence and brings together the cumulative research relating to non-human "smart" species. It reveals how intelligent animals communicate, how they learn behavior, how they show feelings and emotions -- and for some species, how they use tools, count, and pick up a foreign language!

Fully illustrated with photographs and step-by-step graphics, and drawing on data from historical and current experiments and observations, the book examines intelligence in the great apes (gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans), monkeys, and a surprisingly long list of non-primate species: sea otters, eagles, elephants, dolphins, lions, whales, parrots, honeybees, beetles, rats, woodpeckers, crows, and dogs.

The book's chapters are:

• Comparing Animal Skills and Intelligence -- with each other and with humans
• Animal Tool Use -- in nature, in captivity, environmental adaptation
• Communication in Animals -- language, intention, meaning, alarms
• Imitation and Social Learning -- culture, observational learning
• Social Cognition and Emotion -- cooperation, altruism, empathy, deception
• Self-recognition and Awareness -- consciousness, mirror self-recognition
• Numerical Abilities in Animals -- counting, uses of quantity
• Animals and Human Non-verbal Language -- sign language, shapes, graphic symbols.

This new edition's updates reflect the massive surge in research on animal cognitiion in the last 3 years -- in companion dogs, birds, insects, stingrays and mongooses.

Sally Boysen, PhD, is internationally recognized for her work in chimpanzee cognition. She is currently a consulting editor for the Journal of Comparative Psychology, and her research has been featured on the PBS series NOVA and on BBC Horizons.

Deborah Custance, PhD, has conducted research on social learning in several species of primates and published papers in international journals.