Reddit reviews Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

I'll stick to recommending science communication books (those that don't require a deep background on biological concepts):

• On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection - Charles Darwin, bonus points if you can get a 1st edition reprint (before his colleagues made him change a lot of important things); it is a must-read but it might need quite some time to truly understand it, it is a heavy read.
  
  
• A lot of people recommend the Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins but that one is one of his most controversial books and if you decide to read it, you should take everything with a pinch of salt; for Dawkins I prefer to recommend the Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution and the Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design. Just beware of Dawkins, he's a little dogmatic in his approach.
  
  
• The Dialectical Biologist - Richard Levins & Richard Lewontin.
  
  
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Thomas Kuhn, this one will change forever your conception of science as a whole.
  
  
• The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature - Matt Ridley.
  
  
• Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, and the Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History - Stephen J. Gould.
  
  
• The Ghosts of Evolution: Non-sensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological Anachronisms - Connie Barlow.
  
  
• Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? - Frans de Waal, this one is about animal cognition but has an incredible underline of all the deficiencies and prejudges on science.
  
  
• Microbe Hunters - Paul de Kruif.
  
  
• Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution, and What is Life? - Lynn Margulis.
  
  
• The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark - Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan.
  
  
• A Short Story of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson.
  
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  For books that everyone studying biology ends up reading, my candidate would be Lehninger's Principles of Biochemistry, by Nelson & Cox but that's a textbook.

1. You left off the next response--if a human were not intelligent enough to know it was being raised for food is it OK? For example, killing children after a few months the way veal calves are? (Side note: you may be surprised how little we actually know about animal intelligence. Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? delves into the topic if you are interested.)
   
   
2. This is the classic "Because I can't do everything, I will do nothing" argument. You're correct that we are not morally perfect beings. But we can objectively say veganism is more moral than not.
   
   
3. Seems to be a reiteration of point 2.
   
   I also have a question for you. Do you eat "humanely" raised meat, eggs, and dairy 100% of the time? If not, how do you justify your consumption of factory farmed animal products?

I know this comment wont be seen, but there's an excellent book on this subject called "Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are?" It does a great job of wiping away the foolish concept that animals are dumb creatures simply following instinct.

https://www.amazon.com/Are-Smart-Enough-Know-Animals/dp/0393246183

There's a book that is very popular right now called, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?.

Since reading it, I've realized that people who doubt the intelligence of other animals are saying a lot more about their own intelligence than the intelligence of the other animals. The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness stated unequivocally that all birds, mammals, and many other animals are without a doubt conscious individuals.

I'll assume you're just making a one-off joke; the field of animal intelligence and how to assess it (and how well equipped we even are to assess it) is very deep and interesting.

Here's a good layman's primer https://www.amazon.com/Are-Smart-Enough-Know-Animals/dp/0393246183/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483298053&sr=8-1&keywords=are+we+smart+enough+to+know+how+smart+animals+are

I was just listening to this short podcast the other day on this topic, its an interview with the primatologist Frans De Waal who has done a lot of work in this area ( wrote a good book on the subject too ), and he talks a good amount in the podcast about just that, how he has seen the paradigm in ethology and animal science change over his career, to a more complicated and nuanced understanding of animal cognition: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07wt6bj

Insects specifically have a lot of surprising capacities. They can learn, communicate, learn to recognize people's faces, they have a lot of memory, navigational abilities, different permutations of language, it's even being looked into that they might have aspects of metacognition.

Some other interesting articles on insect intelligence:

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/i-asked-leading-entomologists-whats-the-smartest-bug-in-the-world

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26263427

http://bioteaching.com/insect-brains-and-animal-intelligence/

Here is the mobile version of your link

Franz de Waal is worth checking out:

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0393246183/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_d7T2Db5K15A6K

Some of Richard Dawkins' biology/evolution books are packed with info about animals, too. While not an easy read, The Ancestor's Tale goes through all kinds of interesting adaptations of animals from humans going backwards through the ages. It's a masterpiece. Highly recommended.

Hmm. Now I'm trying to think of all the animals shown to have a decently high order of intelligence. There's the Hominids (Humans, Chimps, Orangutans, Gorillas) that have high level social intelligence, self awareness (mirror dot test) and problem solving/tool use. Chimps have incredible visual memory Cephalopods (Octopi & Cuttlefish) have shown tool use, incredible spacial awareness, and extremely complex brains for invertebrates. Some birds, especially some species of Corvids and parrots have demonstrated tool use, problem solving, strong memory, and language (African Gray Parrots notably excel at language).

There's also a scattering of various other mammals that demonstrate intelligence, including dolphins, killer whales, elephants, pigs, and many breeds of dog. I don't know, intelligence is a weird thing. I'm not entirely sure we as humans are actually entirely intelligent enough to fully know the alien forms of intelligence other species are capable of.

If you're interested in further reading on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Are-Smart-Enough-Know-Animals/dp/0393246183/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483298053&sr=8-1&keywords=are+we+smart+enough+to+know+how+smart+animals+are

Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are?

I think you need to read this book.
http://www.amazon.com/Are-Smart-Enough-Know-Animals/dp/0393246183

I’m not sure what you’re saying. You’re saying using tools, communicating, and understanding death is not incredibly smart? You do understand that only humans and apes alike can do that, correct? I never said Chimps we’re smarter than humans so I’m not too sure what humans have achieved has anything to do with this? Yes humans have done and do more but we’re the most advanced/complex animal in the world. Saying Chimps aren’t that far behind is very true because they aren’t. Chimps are very intelligent in many many ways and only a little ways behind human intelligence. That is fact not opinion dude.

Here check out this book and maybe you’ll have a better grasp at what we’re dealing with:
https://www.amazon.com/Are-Smart-Enough-Know-Animals/dp/0393246183





https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/are-
humans-smarter-than-chimps-think-again/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2120078/Natasha-chimp-genius-stuns-scientists-human-like-levels-intelligence.html

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/chimp-intelligence-vs-humans-2017-1