I enjoyed this book. It made me understand my iguana so much better. I was so moved by this that I wrote Temple Grandin an email and received a nice email in return. ( )

A fascinating point of view that makes you wonder just how much of the world passes by unnoticed on a daily basis. I read this book before I wrote my novel "Dragonforge" and used some of the ideas from it to craft the character of Zeeky, to explain her ability to "talk" to animals. ( )

Just fascinating. The subtitle of this book is "Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior". Temple Grandin, who is autistic, made a career in designing humane systems for handling animals in slaughter houses, poultry farms, breeding stables and kennels, and other situations where the needs of production have often resulted in appalling, frightening conditions for the animals involved. She has also advised the operators of such facilities on behavioral issues because she understands the animal mind in a way "neuro-typical" humans do not. In this books she explains the ways in which animals and autistic humans see things similarly, and how this has helped her see the world through animal eyes. There is a lot of brain science, human and animal psychology, common sense and uncommon wisdom, humor and heart in this book. Grandin says people always wonder how she could work for the meat-packing industry when she loves animals. Her answer is that she doesn't see the human race converting to vegetarianism any time soon (and that she herself was highly motivated to do so but found herself physically incapable of sticking to it), that most of the animals we eat "wouldn't exist if human beings hadn't bred them into being"...and that therefore we "owe them a decent life and a decent death, and their lives should be as low-stress as possible. That's my job." "If we're interested in animals, then we need to study animals for their own sake, and on their own terms, to the extent that it's possible. What are they doing? What are they feeling? What are they thinking? What are they saying? Who are they? And: what do we need to do to treat animals fairly, responsibly, and with kindness?" She applies these questions to ALL animals---pets, dairy cows, egg-producing chickens, animals raised for food, animals studied in labs and in the wild, birds, squirrels, elephants, snakes---without limits. A formal review said this is "one of those rare books that elicit a 'wow' on almost every page." Ask my husband how many times I made him "just listen to this!" while reading it. ( )

This is an easy to understand book just packed with interesting information about animals and their emotions, behavior, communication, and importance to humans. Connections are made between autistic brain function and that of animals especially about similarities seen by the author who is looking at this through the eyes of an autistic person. Grandin quite possibly jumps to conclusions, but her insights are generally backed up with studies she has seen or done herself. I learned a lot and time after time I was surprised and awed by what she presented. One of my favorites was a 30-year study of Alex, a parrot, by Dr. Irene Pepperberg. Her means of training using a 3rd party and the intelligence and communication shown by Alex were just amazing. I found a couple videos online of Alex and Pepperberg at work. ( )

You know, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

I read great swaths of it five years ago or more, enjoyed them immensely but never finished the book. It's been sitting on my to-read shelf forever and I finally picked it up to finish it. Oddly enough, I read [a:Temple Grandin|1567|Temple Grandin|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1241222068p2/1567.jpg]'s [b:Thinking in Pictures|103408|Thinking in Pictures My Life with Autism|Temple Grandin|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320507943s/103408.jpg|1775856] before finishing this book. Autism isn't an especially deep interest of mine, cognitive ehtology is. It's funny how life works.

[b:Animals in Translation|7366|Animals in Translation Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior|Temple Grandin|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1426808115s/7366.jpg|10490] will likely forever be controversial. The idea that animals and autistic people have similar cognition is going to be controversial and politically charged regardless of who you are. Nevertheless, the observations that Temple Grandin makes are compelling and ultimately, not all that insulting. She's not comparing autistic people to animals in a negative way, instead she's stating that due to changes in brain chemistry and make up both perceive the world in a way that's different from normal functioning people. She then backs her statement up with personal experiences, observations, and what at that time were recent studies. I'd be interested to hear what she thinks of her hypothesis now, though I doubt much has changed in the intervening years.

She credits animals with being far more intelligent than we believe, simply intelligent in different ways. Is a dog's ability to predict a person's seizure before it happens a sign of intelligence? They are responding to signs too subtle for us to predict. What about a magpie pretending to have a broken wing to distract a predator? What about the way ravens and wolves interact? Or the migration patterns of birds? The social structure of horses? Did we domesticate wolves, or did they domesticate us? Did we learn music from birds or vice versa? Is music, ultimately, how animals communicate?

I found the book fascinating and a good starting point for anyone interested in animal thought and behavior. While it will likely forever remain controversial, as Temple Grandin rightly points out, this field is controversial to begin with. Very few people are willing to admit just how intelligent and emotional animals can be and give further ground to them in such a way. Humans want to remain special, and bit by bit these studies are making it more evident that humans, truthfully, aren't. I don't think many people want to deal with the ramifications of that. ( )

Temple Grandin is a professor at a college in Colorado. She is also autistic and through this disability she has the special ability to know how to help animals. she specifically is a consultant for feedlots/stockyards throughout the United States to help kill animals humanely. Very interesting. I really enjoyed it! ( )

Temple Grandin's unique viewpoint as an animal behaviorist and a person with autism allows her to understand animal perceptions and experiences in ways the most people can't. Important ideas discussed include animal's hypersensitivity to details and inability to filter sensory information in the same way the human brain does and that consciousness does not rely on language. Provides a new and valuable understanding of animals.

Quite brilliant. Grandin presents many theories and observations that seem rather obvious in retrospect but must have been groundbreaking to discover. I know I was completely awestruck by many of Grandin's observations. ( )

One of the most amazing books i have ever read. Couldn't put it down.

This book was a whole lot more interesting and informative than I expected it to be. I am dubious about any deep connection between autism and animal minds; I think Grandin may be generalizing a bit from her fairly unusual experience. But this book has a huge wealth of anecdote about animals from an observant, intelligent, and educated person who is deeply interested in them. It also has some wierd but actually useful analogies to computer software. I plan to read her other book, "Animals Make Us Human", which I originally avoided because I feared the dim sentimentality that the title of the book seemed to promise. I realize now that the book's thesis is at least related to our shared human and canine evolutionary heritage, and although this co-evolution seems to me quite speculative, the book may be much more interesting and substantial than I had imagined. ( )

I do love Grandin's work, both in the ideas in and writing style of her books, and in the fact that she makes me feel less guilty for being a carnivore because she's done so much work for feedlots and slaughterhouses.

This book really is a must read. I love the structure of each argument, in particular. Now, bear in mind that I was too engrossed in reading to take notes, so my example may not be exactly accurate, but it could go something like this:

First, she'd say something axiomatic, like, we all know that baby animals like cuddles. Then she'd point out research to support that, like, the famous experiment where baby monkeys were given two wire mothers, one with milk, one wrapped with toweling, and they'd get desperately hungry before leaving the softer mother (even though it was neither alive nor furred nor scented...). Then she'd talk about newer, lesser-known research, often based on neuro-science instead of just observational psychology, and/or about her experiences as an autistic person or about other autistic people she's known. Or she'd talk about experiences in her career, or with friends' pets, about different kinds of reactions animals have to nurturing touch or lack thereof. And finally she'd theorize about what is actually going on in everyone's different kinds of brains, and what all those ideas, if integrated together, could be saying about the insufficiently acknowledged intelligence of animals, and about the best ways to treat animals, and autistic people, respectfully and humanely.

I love particularly her examples of what kinds of jobs the people with autism can excel at, and her insistence that dogs are being over- and mis-bred, for example breeders are killing collies' intelligence and giving Border Collies a bad reputation for makers of mischief by not ensuring they have *jobs* to suit their nature.

Sorry - I don't think that was particularly coherent. Read the book yourself, really. She's much easier to understand than I am.

Still not convinced? Ok.

In the section on prairie dogs, she introduces Dr. Con Slobodchikoff, who speculates that instead of looking for animal language in our closest genetic relatives, the primates, we should look at animals with the greatest need for language in order to stay alive." Quite an eye-opening idea, eh? Read the rest of that section and you'll probably find yourself not only unsurprised, but nodding in agreement.

Or, how about this statement. I'll give you no context - you'll have to read it yourself to believe it. "We're just leaving it up to animals like the seizure alert [service] dogs to invent their own jobs."

One of the most important things *I* got out of the book was clarity about my opinion of anthropomorphism. I always have known I'm not a fan. Otoh, I've also felt that critters are smarter, at least in some ways, than we give them credit for being. Now I can integrate my attitude thus: by perceiving animals through our own experience, and by giving them humanoid motivations and beliefs, we're blinding ourselves to being able to understand their true natures.

In other words, don't say, "That chimp is as smart as a 3 year old human." Say instead, "That chimp has the vocabulary of an average 2 year old child and can solve addition & subtraction problems typically solvable by 4 year old children." (Not Grandin's example, but my own synthesis.)

I only have two minor quibbles. Grandin doesn't define 'animals' in the same sense I usually see it. She usually means mammals and birds only - but, confusingly, sometimes means social insects or even reptiles. Second, she sometimes over-generalizes to include other people with autism as being very like her, whereas she and I both know that ASD manifests differently in different people.

I've read a lot of psychology and popular neuro-science books lately, and a lot of books by and about people who are autistic, and in none of them did I learn as much as I did from this. Of course, they may have laid the foundation to help me get more out of this work, but I do believe that if you only want to read one book on any of the subjects covered here, this would be a great choice." ( )

Despite the title, this isn't a book about how to understand animals (or people for that matter.. ). It is a very deep and engaging discussion about the process (and philosophy, art, science and spirit) of understanding across boundaries of cognition, reflection, instinct and sentiment. It is as much about what we don't know as about what we do know (or think we know), and there's never a point where the authors step beyond profoundly good (cautious) observation and research. And yet what might be a dry subject to some, is constantly brought alive and immediate by Temple Grandin's extraordinary ability to bring her experience of autism to bear on the subject. I can't say that that my sympathy with her experience doesn't colour my judgement, but to my mind this book is a stand-out in the literature on ethology, worth reading alongside E.O. Wilson's 'Biophilia' and the work of Singer, Sacks, de Waal and others in that field.

I'm not sure how Grandin and Johnson divided up the duties on this book - Grandin's 'left-field' thinking is apparent on every page (and every page is worth reading), but if Johnson did nothing more than craft the story then she deserves surpassing credit for making this the sort of book that you read at one sitting and then wish there was more of it. Oliver Sacks, who wrote one of the most deservedly famous articles about autism ('An Anthropologist on Mars') described this book as "deeply moving and fascinating". In the plethora of favourable reviews of this book - and this one included - nobody has said it better. Hugely recommended if you are interested in ethology, or in just what it is to be human. ( )

I enjoyed the insight into animal behavior and thinking that the author provided. The parallels between normal animal behavior and human autism were striking and obviously have helped the author in her work with domesticated animals. ( )

Interesting book. A lot of insight into how animals perceive their world; however, I disagree with some of the premises put forth in this book - namely that animals can never forget a traumatic experience, thus never fully recover from it. There are people working with animals, particularly dogs, proving that's not entirely accurate every day. ( )

loved this book. anyone interested in autism and animal behavior should read it ( )

fascinating insight into the animal and human brain from a person with autism ( )

I'm not really much of an animal person, but I liked this book a lot, mostly for the view it gives you of what it might be like to be autistic.

I'd be interested to meet Temple Grandin. I'm amazed that she has managed to build such an impressive career, since she says in this book that until she was about thirty, every day she had the same feeling of anxiety that you get when you are about to defend your doctoral dissertation. Every day!

She eventually started taking medication that improved things for her, but it's hard to imagine surviving that level of stress for so long.

If you do have a pet, definitely read this book--it gives a lot of interesting insights into why animals behave the way they do. ( )

In Animals in Translation, Temple Grandin describes how her autism helps her discover how animals perceive the world. She compares an autistic person’s perceptions with animals’ perceptions, and contrasts them with how non-autistic people think. She also gives her own ideas about how domesticated animals can be treated/trained in order to provide them with the best environment possible. Overall, a very interesting book...It changed my perception of how autistic people and animals think. ( )

Not sure what I expected but I found this book to be quite intriguing. Learned a lot about how animals think and learn, but it was even more interesting foiled against how most of us think, and how autistics often think/learn. An interesting read. ( )

This book will help you understand that animals are real: they think and have emotions, just like people. And just like people, animals are individual unto themselves and their breed/species. It seemed like this book focused more on trying to relate that animals think, see, smell, learn, and react differently than people, making them different but not less. This may be what Grandin was trying to convey about non-autistic people compared to autistic people.

Some of the statements have to be taken lightly, as it seems were personal opinion overlaps scientific foundation, making it seem as though all statements are proven and should be cautioned.

All in all, it is a very good book for the behavioral understanding of animals and an introductory for human and animal empathy. ( )

As a woman with autism, Temple Grandin adds an interesting and important voice to the conversation regarding animal rights and animals' involvement in our lives generally. She suggests that because "normal human beings are built to see what they're expecting to see," it is hard for us to conceptualize how differently non-human animals think and perceive their world. Animals and people with autism share a much stronger reaction to novelty, meaning that they're highly detail-oriented and also may be disturbed by things that most people wouldn't recognize as anything out of the ordinary: light or shadows or flickering. Logic, and the sequencing of cause and effect, happen differently than in neurotypical human thought processes, and things that don't make sense can be as great of a disturbance as audio-visual signals.

Writing all of this out, I feel kind of horrible that it sounds rather like "Autistic people are just like animals." That's not my point nor Grandin's. Instead, her book aims to raise awareness of the 'otherness' of animal psychology, and she illustrates that with her own experience of mental 'otherness.' She argues strongly against our tendency to anthropomorphize animals, particularly pets; being overly confident about their motives may lead to bad training if not cruel practices. I did wonder how much she restrained her own tendency to say with confidence what animals are really thinking or acting upon, showing the same caution, but she's a great animal behaviorist doing important research and work to treat animals with respect and dignity. ( )

A wonderful book with insights into both animal behavior and autism. I wish this book had been around during my childhood in the heartland.

Fantastic book! Possessing the particular combo of autism/brain/personality/abilities that she has, Temple clearly has a unique foot-in-both-worlds when it comes to animals and humans. Which is one thing to assert, but Temple's writings make you understand exactly how accurate an assessment that is. I feel fortunate to have had her influence and perspectives present in the advances/improvements to the humane slaughter of (food source) animals, and simply to have been able to so thoroughly enjoy the insight she has into both human and animal behavior. ( )

This is certainly an interesting book. Temple Grandin is an autistic woman who found a way to apply her specific autistic sensitivity toward the solution of real-world problems. She works as a consultant for slaughterhouse and placed where animals are raised, treated, and killed. She draws parallels between her experience with autism and her understanding of how animals think, and experience/feel the world.
The book is written in a non-fluid English: each sentence sounds of independent from the previous and the next ones. But after a while I got used to that. What I didn't like was mostly her way of mixing scientific statement with her intuitions, hypothesis, and some anecdotal evidence. A more rigorous distinction between facts and non-facts could help to increase her credibility.
Despite all the explanations she provided, I'm still having problems understanding how an animal lover can work for a slaughterhouse. ( )

A high-functioning autistic PhD who designs humane livestock holding and processing facilities shares her insights on animals and humans. Because she primarily thinks in images rather than words and because her autism makes it difficult to generalize, Grandin believes her own perceptions are more typical of animal perceptions than are those of neurotypical humans. In an interesting and accesible style, she integrates a lot of research findings about how animals (primarily domestic animals) perceive the world and react to those perceptions. She also ventures into the emotional life of animals. ( )