The Inner Life of Animals: Love, Grief, and Compassion: Surprising Observations of a Hidden World

The novelty of the Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben's last book, was the author's ability to combine scientific discoveries with personal insight and anecdote to describe how truly animate trees actually are. For example, Wohlleben shows how trees communicate, aid their offspring and even display acts of altruism.In the Youtube era, the fear is that a book on the inner Life of animals would be something akin to the cute cat videos that deluge our Facebook newsfeeds. But Mr. Wohlleben does not disappoint. He again writes prose that is one of the best examples of popular science in the twenty-first century. While always hewing to a necessary humility about the limits of our scientific knowledge of animals, Wohlleben weaves the best of scientific findings with personal anecdotes of the animals in his forest which illustrate and develop what otherwise could be cold and esoteric research.We are story-telling creatures after all and Wohlleben has discovered a formula for writing scientific books that are both popular and informative. Briefly, that formula is to write with sincerity about a subject one obviously deeply cares about and mix personal encounters with up to date scientific findings. Mr. Wohlleben says he could have written several more books with all the ideas he has about nature. I only hope this proves to be true.The one point which some readers may disagree with is the overall philosophical worldview of the author. Both in the Hidden Life of Trees and the Inner Life of Animals, Wohllenben vigorously attacks both the modern notion of flora and fauna as natural resources for the use of humanity as well as the Biblical notion of humankind as the pinnacle of creation.Instead, he argues for a view in which mankind is one species among many-- a species which is increasingly wreaking havoc on the world's diverse ecosystems. There is no romanticization of nature--animals starve and do vicious things to one another-- but there is a stability and order which human beings are increasingly threatening. This perspective is by no means unique to Mr. Wohlleben, but he is certainly one of its most articulate advocates.Regardless of whether you share that outlook, readers will delight in the stories and science with which Wohlleben shows how animals live lives that are active, emotional and meaningful even with little or no human interaction.

Arrived on time, great condition

In his bestselling book, The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben revealed the fascinating magic and mystery of trees. He spent his childhood close to nature, where he was fascinated by the family of life. In his adult years, he has been a forest manager in Germany, continually striving to nurture the health of the land, and minimize harms. He has spent much of his life outdoors. Consequently, he has developed a perception of reality that is quite different from the herd.In his new book, The Inner Life of Animals, he directs his attention to animal life, which is also little understood by mainstream society — the folks who spend most of their lives in climate controlled compartments. For them, the natural world is often just a meaningless blur of scenery along the freeway, and wildlife sightings are mostly on glowing screens. The new book is a pleasant voyage into a kinder and gentler mindset. Readers are served a banquet of interesting ideas, mostly.Wohlleben is a caring man who wishes that humans would cause far less damage and suffering in the world. That’s his message. At his home in the woods, he keeps goats, horses, rabbits, dogs, and chickens. He apparently treats them with kindness until they drop dead from old age, or become terminally ill. He confesses to drinking goat milk and making cheese, but says not a peep about meat (a touchy subject these days). He detests factory farms, hunters, and industrial forest miners.He has a deep appreciation for the coherence of wild ecosystems, and the remarkable relationships that coevolution has produced. A primary focus of his book is to confront the cult of human supremacy. Like patriarchy, and get-rich-quick fever, human supremacist beliefs intensify the madness of modern society. The cult asserts that anything non-human is below us. It’s perfectly OK to cram 20,000 chickens, shoulder to shoulder, inside a metal shed, without guilt or shame. They are mindless machines that can feel no pain, organisms incapable of thoughts or feelings.Supremacism has left a boot print on the English language. Throughout the book, there are two categories of critters, “humans” and “animals,” implying that humans are not animals. Of course, that’s not true. Take off your clothes and look in a mirror, and you will see an animal that looks a lot like a chimp or bonobo, our closest living relatives.In the mirror you will see a furless tropical primate that evolved an upright bipedal stance fine-tuned for long distance running. This enabled us to survive via persistence hunting — chasing animals across the savannah for hours, until they collapsed from exhaustion. Louis Liebenberg wrote about this. Our ancestors have been hunters for several million years, long before we became Homo sapiens. As every gardener knows, our bodies are poorly designed for gathering seeds, nuts, melons, and berries — too much bending and backaches.Wohlleben hates hunting, which in its current form is “no longer appropriate.” During the season, the woods are crowded with hunters, hiding close to bait piles, with high-powered rifles. Bullets are whizzing all over the place, and up to 650,000 wild boars die every year. Some animals are merely wounded, and suffer agonizing deaths. He doesn’t describe what “appropriate” hunting would be. Society has vigorously exterminated wild carnivores, whilst growing staggering amounts of boar food. Is boar overpopulation appropriate?Wohlleben owns a number of domesticated animals, and they spend their days in locations enclosed by electric fences. They cannot go where they please, and the fences discourage the indigenous wild lynx from dining on his exotic invasive critters. This disturbs him a bit. “Nature didn’t intend for goats and horses to spend their whole lives as prisoners behind a fence. Let’s not pretend: these animals would hightail it in a heartbeat if they could.” (Did nature intend the existence of domesticated animals?) The best he can do is treat them respectfully.He lives in the twenty-first century, when many people own domesticated animals, a source of wealth and status. For these folks, wild predators are evil. Chickens are fox food, and foxes are demonic anti-capitalist anarchists. Many also plant large fields of boar food, and get quite upset when boars come to enjoy their generous offering. Some farmers surround their corn fields with electric fences to keep them out. In the good old days, before domestication, nobody owned the large game and edible plants. Nobody got upset when wild predators consumed wild herbivores, because nobody’s status was diminished. In egalitarian societies, all people were equal, and status consciousness was totally inappropriate.In The Others, Paul Shepard brilliantly described how important it is for all humans to spend their entire lives in healthy wild ecosystems, surrounded by many species of wild animals. He also explained the many ugly consequences of capturing, confining, and domesticating “goofies” and “hooved locusts.” Civilized primates are seriously deformed and traumatized by spending their lives in isolation from their wild relatives.It’s easy to gobble a Big Mac when you have been taught that animals are like rutabagas, dumb organisms. Now, we’re learning how sensitive and intelligent animals are. To complicate matters, in his tree book, Wohlleben revealed that plants are also not dumb machines. How can we feed ourselves in a morally acceptable manner? Chimps and bonobos happily beat small animals to death, eat them raw, with no guilt at all. A robin eating a worm is not evil. We all feed one another.Wohlleben is a fountain of stories. Foxes lie down, tongues out, and play dead to attract hungry crows. Goats move away from the herd when it’s time for them to die, because their corpse will attract predators. Hives of bees with insufficient honey for the winter will attack weaker hives, kill defenders, and swipe their stash. Swifts rarely stand on the ground, they sleep while soaring. The book is loaded with hundreds of anecdotes like these. I shall let you discover them on your own.According to the human supremacist myths, animals do not have consciousness, self-awareness, or emotions. They cannot feel pain, communicate, remember events, grieve, express gratitude, or recognize individual humans. Today, the core of the controversy over animal intelligence is whether or not they are capable of thinking.Humans, of course, can think like crazy. In our brains, the neocortex is the engine of self-awareness, consciousness, and thinking — and humans have the greatest neocortex of all. Oddly, while most of the book is dedicated to challenging human supremacy, Wohlleben refers to our neocortex as the “crowning achievement of creation.” Indeed, no other species is capable of experiencing so much cognitive dissonance.Folks who understand environmental history and ecological sustainability, and have learned how to engage in critical thinking, can readily detect enormous flaws in the core myths of our culture. The view from their mountaintop, far above the thick smog of dodgy beliefs, perceives that thinking is at least as much of a curse as a blessing. We can live without glowing screens, but we can’t live in a toxic wasteland, with a hostile climate. Supremacist myths trump common sense. You can lead the herd to the pool of knowledge, but you can’t make them think.“Mommy?” “Yes, dear?” “What is intelligence?” “Sweetheart, intelligence is turning old growth forests into money, destabilizing the climate, acidifying the oceans, driving many species to extinction — and not caring. Intelligence is speeding across the land in motorized wheelchairs, dumping trash on the moon, creating vast coastal dead zones, and developing miracle cures for the infectious and degenerative diseases that emerged with the birth of civilization.” “Mommy?” “Yes, dear?” “I don’t want to be intelligent. Can I be wild, free, and happy?”

Of short, interesting stories

A very interesting read. Glad I got it!

The first thing the dear reader will note of Wohlleben's book is the masterful way he weaves between personal anecdotes and scientific research. It seems effortless and results in a most enjoyable and readable text. Sure to be a best seller, his first book written about trees sold 320,000 copies before being translated into English, The Inner LIfe of Animals leaves the reader with a clear understanding that animals share many psychological and social characteristics with people.Wohlleben writes of grief, fear, hierarchy, thievery, altruism, aging, and love. But with all of this two parts of the book really caught my attention. Wohlleben has a special feeling for pigs and he notes in several places their intelligence. His feeling is that if people really knew more about pigs, they would be eaten by humans about as regularly as are apes. The second part of the book that I found fascinating seems really little more than an afterthought. Wohlleben discusses "heaven." Don't worry, no spoiler alert, but that short section is worth the price of the book.Buy the book and enjoy a heckeva good read.

If you read and loved The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohellben, the mystery, and magic and poetry of that book, well then this one does not quite compare to it. Those of us who love animals of all kinds already know the spiritual connections with them. There are some insightful chapters that are rather enjoyable. But if you are looking for wonderful animal testimonies, I suggest and highly recommend all the books in the series by James Harriot, All Creatures Great and Small. (There are abou 4 in the series. Fabulous!)

This book is in perfect condition!

Bought for my husband and he loved it

As usual, he's outdone himself. I didn't read it in one shot as it is more of a textbook, but enjoyed the descriptions of fungus that resembles teddy bear and that which resembles tiny elephants.. and about the navigation system of a moth being haywired with garden lights. Love how this author brings everything to life.

This is one of those rare and beautiful books whose memory will stay with you for a lifetime! If you are an animal lover or someone who ponders deeply about emotions and consciousness, this is just the right book for you.All the remarkable examples and anecdotes which Peter Wohlleben has narrated teach us some new and fascinating aspect of life. This book will make you relook at animals in a wholly different light and give you a profound perspective about the nature of self awareness. It's both a deeply moving and at the same time humorous and joyous work.You will learn about crows that adopted kittens, gorillas that expressed profound thoughts about death, slime molds that can solve mazes, selfless bacteria, grief in deer and lot lot more.If you love animals, just buy it without a second thought. You will treasure this book. Even if you aren't an animal lover, you will come away deeply enriched after reading this book.

Initially I was a little put off by the almost childish writing style but that quickly endears when you get caught up in the engaging content. The author has a very wide working knowledge of animals and is able to bring that information across with his numerous examples, stories and anecdotes. I already have his book on trees at home and look forward to reading that next.