Are You Smarter Than A Chimpanzee? A Mind Bending Menagerie Of Animal Psychology

Description

What makes humans special? What makes us different from animals? Psy-Q author Ben Ambridge's entertaining, illuminating new book has a surprising answer: less than you might think. Really, we're all just animals. But all animals - us included - are pretty special. Are You Smarter Than a Chimpanzee? is a collection of ingenious tests, puzzles, quizzes and games that pits the reader against a range of extraordinary creatures to show that, from dolphins that understand grammar to parrots that can add up, via fetishist quails and the ant-swarms outsmarting the world's best mathematicians, the animal kingdom is more than a match for anything mankind has to offer. Along the way, Ambridge debunks a plethora of common myths about animals and reveals the bizarre and wonderful science being done at the extreme end of zoology, where animal psychologists are designing personality tests for donkeys and logic problems for pigeons. Based on real, cutting-edge science, Are You Smarter Than a Chimpanzee? makes us laugh, makes us think and above all makes us question our assumptions about our place in the animal kingdom.

Promotion info

Inside the minds of animals, from the author of international psychological sensation Psy-Q

Reviews

Ambridge has a trickster's charm of "How did he do that?" presentation and a stage magician's "Hey presto!" delight in revelation The Times Clever, broad-minded and fun' - Sunday Times Praise for Psy-Q: 'A playful insight into the world of the human mind ... it makes for great fun to turn psychologist and test friends and family and watch them sweat while you raise a brow Irish Examiner

Author description

Ben Ambridge is Reader in Psychology at the University of Liverpool and the ESRC International Centre for Language and Communicative Development (LuCiD). He is a recipient of the Guardian-Wellcome Science Writing Prize and his first book Psy-Q: A Mind-Bending Miscellany of Everyday Psychology was a Sunday Times Book of the Year and has been translated into a dozen languages. Ben writes on psychology for the Guardian and the Big Issue, and his TEDtalk on The Top 10 Myths of Psychology has been viewed over 2 million times. He lives in Sale, Greater Manchester.