The Animal Mind: Profiles of Intelligence and Emotion

Nature author Marianne Taylor’s The Animal Mind is a fascinating exploration of animal intelligence and emotion, with thought-provoking essays, surprising insights, and breathtaking images by leading photographers Joel Sartore, Melissa Groo, Peter Delaney, and others.

We are only beginning to understand the ways in which the animal mind is as complex as our own. A prairie dog’s vocal language is now the most sophisticated ever decoded, but their unique jump-yip poses as many questions as answers. Gorillas use sign language to describe past events to researchers, so does this mean they ruminate and relive their lives? When an ant looks in a mirror to see a dab of blue paint on its head, they try to clean it off, proving the ant is self-aware like us.

The Animal Mind profiles 60 animals as it explores instances of remarkable cognition, communication, consciousness, and culture in the animal kingdom. Full of beautiful portraits and in-depth studies showing these behaviors in action, The Animal Mind offers an illuminating roadmap to animal intelligence.

Marianne Taylor has written more than 30 books on natural history, including The Way of the Hare (Bloomsbury), The Story of Life in 10 Species (MIT Press), and The Pocket Book of Bird Anatomy (Bloomsbury). She has recently completed The Gull Next Door (Princeton) and has written a number of guides for the RSPB. Taylor specializes in evolutionary biology, and her work focuses on the dance between habitat, behavior, and evolution. Her encyclopedic knowledge of animal life and an always-rigorous line of questioning challenge her readers’ often-held assumptions and encourage a sense of discovery. With photographs by principal photographers Joel Sartore (bestselling author of The Photo Ark, 1.6 million Instagram followers), Melissa Groo (105,000 Instagram followers) a photographer and conservationist whose work has appeared on the covers of Audubon, Smithsonian, Outdoor Photographer, and Natural History magazines, and Peter Delaney (5,000 Instagram followers) a wildlife photographer based in South Africa whose work has been published internationally and won numerous awards, including the prestigious BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year three times.