Reddit reviews The Parrot's Lament: And Other True Tales of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence, and Ingenuity

He also used to let some animals out according to https://www.amazon.com/Parrots-Lament-Intrigue-Intelligence-Ingenuity/dp/0452280680

Hmm...been reading about this all morning. Eugene Linden writes on this

http://www.amazon.com/Parrots-Lament-Animal-Intrigue-Intelligen/dp/0452280680/ref=la_B001IQUNI4_1_1/175-8042079-9000351?ie=UTF8&qid=1372096528&sr=1-1

Its good to see animal rights coming to the forefront. I have a blue and gold macaw, today is his 8th birthday, and he has as much a soul as anyone I've ever met. I believe all animals are just as intelligent as us, but in such specialized ways we cannot understand the perspective and write it off as "dumb animal". When you truly connect and communicate with an animal, it is an enlightening and powerful experience.

My parrot, raised out of his cage and with me or my wife all day, is like a 3 year old little boy. He has trouble communicating with us at times, gets frustrated, throws tantrums when he doesn't get what he wants, loves and snuggles on us all the time.

If you are intrigued by animal intelligence, read the book " The Parrots Lament", it has fascinating stories about an orangutan that's an honorary member of the locksmiths guild from an ingenious breakout of his complicated cage.
Link to the book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0452280680?pc_redir=1404663993&robot_redir=1

> "they're not as smart as us."

There's probably some truth to that part of the statement in most cases, using the human definition of smarts of course.

But, I think we tend to overestimate our own intelligence and underestimate the intelligence of other species. I think even in cases where you'd expect an enormous gap in intelligence, it's always smaller than we expect.

Did you know they've identified at least 10 different calls of prairie dogs? Prairie dogs!

These are large ground squirrels. They're rodents. But, they have a different call for human and human with gun! And, when they tested this, a guy walked by the prairie dog colony with a gun. They, of course, correctly gave the alarm call for "human with gun". They're never wrong about that.

More interestingly, when he went by some days later without the gun, they recognized a specific individual of another species and again gave the call "human with gun"!

There are so many great examples of animal intelligence both in formal research and in anecdotal observed cases such as The Parrot's Lament, which is the title story in a book of anecdotal stories of animal intelligence. It was written as a statement that we need to investigate this more, not as if anecdotes count as scientific evidence.