Animal emotion. It’s such a complex and complicated subject, trying to strike the fine balance between observation, experiment and not imposing our own human emotions onto what we see. Anthropomorphism is so easy to do, thinking that an animal looks sad or happy, but are they? And do they experience similar emotions to us?

It was so eye opening in some of the stories found by researchers and those who have observed this in the natural world. Like apes displaying imagination and play. Some of the stories were so heartwarming (examples of friendships interspecies and with humans) and even examples of humour and sarcasm in animals too!

Into the mind of the famous Coco the gorilla was insanely interesting and still blows me away. Even examples of lies and such deep individual personality it was amazing. I loved learning about animal communication and it was mind blowing.

From birds, to dolphins, apes, goats and elephants to name a few, there were many examples of just how amazing animals are, unravelling a whole new layer to the animal kingdom.

It also included self awareness in insects and tests to measure animal intelligence, emotion, communication, awareness and perspective to even prairie dogs displaying grammar! The whole book was one big mind blowing read (or listen in my case. The audiobook was brilliant and fantastically narrated) and I thoroughly and completely recommend if you love animals, want a deeper understanding of them or are simply curious about this subject as a whole.

***ARC provided by the publisher via Netgalley.co.uk in return for an honest review ***

An enjoyable quick read giving interesting anecdotes showing animals ability for empathy, altruism, etc. Whilst there isn't a huge amount included about the actual science behind the animals behaviour it is certainly a good starting point to learn more about animal cognition. Would recommend.