I thoroughly enjoyed this book, though it was rather on the long side and a bit rambling, but it's a topic I enjoy greatly, and an author I love. On top of this, it was read beautifully by Sean Runnette. I'm a big advocate of an author reading their own material, but I understand that there are good reasons why many authors do not. Though this reader isn't Dutch, listening to him reading it so well, it was one of those occasions where, with a slight stretch of the imagination, you can fool yourself into thinking that this is how the author would have read it.
The book rambles a bit and might be somewhat stodgy and overly academic for some, but it was precisely what I was expecting and I had no unpleasant surprises, only a lot of satisfying ones. There were scores of examples of animals' intelligence, with many interesting anecdotes and lots of descriptions of scientific studies which went into enough detail to explain why it was a scientific study and what result it showed, but without belaboring it. The studies have covered all kinds of animals from mollusks to monkeys, birds to apes, fish to elephants, and a variety of others.
The book explains how these studies differ and what they show, and how one study can or cannot be made to work with another species for an assortment of reasons. While it was thorough, I was never bored, and felt no need to skip a page or two. We learn how studies have changed along with our view of society and why older views as to the limitations of animal cognition are invalid, so it's as much a measure of change in human cognition as it is in measuring animal cognition, which is quite intriguing.
I whole-heartedly commend this as a worthy read.
