Thursday, December 19, 2013

Nine of 2013’s best books about pets and animals

At Brain Pickings, Maria Popova tagged nine of 2013’s best books about pets and animals, including:
For much of modern history, dogs have inspired a wealth of art and literature, profound philosophical meditations, scientific curiosity, deeply personal letters, photographic admiration, and even some cutting-edge data visualization. But what is it that makes dogs so special in and of themselves, and so dear to us?

Despite the mind-numbing title, The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs Are Smarter than You Think by Brian Hare, evolutionary anthropologist and founder of the Duke Canine Cognition Center, and Vanessa Woods offers a fascinating tour of radical research on canine cognition, from how the self-domestication of dogs gave them a new kind of social intelligence to what the minds of dogs reveal about our own. In fact, one of the most compelling parts of the book has less to do with dogs and more with genius itself.

In examining the definition of genius, Hare echoes...[read on]
Read about the other books on the list.

The Page 99 Test: The Genius of Dogs.

The Genius of Dogs is one of Becky Ferreira's 11 best books about dogs.

--Marshal Zeringue