IN THE MARGINS
“The Inner Life of Animals” by Peter Wohlleben, Greystone Books, 277 pages, $29.95 hardcover, ebook and audio available
Peter Wohlleben, a forester in Germany, is the author of last year’s bestselling “The Hidden Life of Trees.” In this book, he turns from exploring the “emotions" of supposedly inanimate trees, to exploring the feelings, memory and intelligence of animals. He combines scientific studies with anecdotes about his own pets. He and his family live on a small farm in the forest he manages with a dog, horses, goats, chickens and rabbits, plus four bee hives. His love for both flora and fauna permeates each chapter of “The Inner Life of Animals.”
Here are a few things I learned: Hedgehogs and other mammals can turn off the pangs of hunger when faced with rotting food. Dogs can adopt orphaned piglets, even nurse them. Fish experience pain when hooked, as do crabs when boiled. Horses doze while standing, and like roosting chickens, can lock their joints to relax their muscles. Slime mould (single celled with many nuclei) can find its way to food through a maze, albeit slowly. Wild boars and domesticated pigs, unlike goats and sheep, have long memories when it comes to recognizing who they are related to.
I find it hard to imagine cognition taking place in the minuscule brains of fruit flies, ants or honey bees. But bees and ants live in huge colonies encompassing thousands of fellow insects. A kind of social intelligence keeps the hive or colony going, repeating its life cycle and seasonal behaviour patterns unchanged over millenniums. Bees return from nectar gathering and communicate where they’ve been with an aerial dance inside the hive. Wohlleben disputes the view that individual bees lack intelligence but rely on the super organism “brain” of the hive. He points out that bees remember people and can sting someone who annoyed them in the past.
The intelligence of corvids including crows and ravens has been documented elsewhere (try a TED talk by John Marluff — https://youtu.be/0fiAoqwsc9g). The author develops a relationship with a raven who shows up each day when he is feeding his two horses in their pasture. One morning it landed with an acorn in its mouth which it proceeded to bury beneath a tuft of grass. When it noticed Peter watching, it moved the acorn several times to new hiding spots. Then it flew to its regular fence post for his daily offering of a few grain kernels. Later he realized that the raven had chosen to hide the acorn rather than eat it which would’ve meant stashing the grain, a more difficult task.
In the next chapter, he asks if animals choose to have fun. Crows again are in the spotlight, particularly the videos, also on YouTube, of a crow using a plastic lid to slide down a snow-covered roof. This pursuit of pleasure obviously goes beyond the rules of survival. Anyone who owns a cat or dog has lots of experience playing with them. But what about crows who tease dogs by pulling their tails? Wohlleben suggests that the bird knows that the dog cannot turn fast enough to catch it, which makes it so much fun.
“The Inner Life of Animals” accumulates lots of evidence, both scientific and anecdotal, to prove that animals have feelings. While skeptics will remain unconvinced, I came away from the book with a deeper appreciation for the sentient beings we share this planet with. This includes acknowledging the cruelty of many farming practices that crowd the animals we eat and kill them with disregard for their pain. New Year’s Resolution: eat less meat. As my vegan son says, animals are our friends.