Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel - Carl Safina

Trying to figure out what animals are thinking and what emotions they feel is such a tricky business that scientists have come to see it as a landmine capable of destroying their reputations and careers for good. Attribute too much logic or awareness to a non-human species, and you just might become a laughingstock within the scientific community forever. Carl Safina took that risk in 2015 in Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel, a 411-page book in which he emphasizes that, “Speculation about animals’ mental experiences happens to be the main quest of this book. The tricky task ahead: to go only where evidence, logic, and science lead. And to get it right.” 

It’s hard to read Beyond Words without coming away with the impression that Safina did exactly that. What fascinates me most about Safina’s work, however, is how he came into the study wanting to learn two things: how animals are like humans and what observing them can teach us about ourselves. Instead, what he ended up walking away with was just the opposite: a better understanding of how humans are like animals and what being human can teach us about animals. The more he learned, and the more he thought about his goal, Safina realized:

I’d somehow assumed that my quest was to let the animals show how much they are like us. My task now — a much harder task, a much deeper task — would be to endeavor to see who animals simply are — like us or not.

Beyond Words is divided into a prologue, four parts, and a two-page epilogue. Part One is dedicated to elephants, Part Two to wolves, Part Three (the shortest section) to several different species, and Part Four to whales. Each section details the observations that Safina made during the time he spent working with small groups of scientists who have dedicated their entire lives to tracking and learning about a single non-human species. The big surprise about being around people like these scientists is how deeply they relate to individuals within the animal populations they have grown so familiar with. Often, it seems that the researchers have developed genuinely deep relationships with individual elephants, wolves, whales, and other animals. They have become friends in every sense of the word.

At first glance, it may sound as if these scientists may have strayed into dangerous territory. But as they observe their favored species, the “evidence, logic, and science” begin to pile up so overwhelmingly that it is difficult to disagree with what they say. Readers of Beyond Words will experience a wide range of emotions that includes skepticism, awe, surprise, anger, despair, and hope for the future.

Bottom Line: Beyond Words is an eye-opener, a book that reminds us of where our own species fits into the world, along with just how much damage we have done to other species during our ascension to becoming the most dominant animal on the planet. The ultimate takeaway for me, personally, is that being the most dominant species on the planet does not at all mean that we are the most “humane” species on the planet. 

Books like Beyond Words have the power to rock your world. As one of Carl Safina’s neighbors (J.P. Badkin) put it: “If you’re not careful, you can learn something new every day.” Well, here’s your chance. 

Carl Safina