A maverick scientist

Back in 2011, Bekoff´s book "The Emotional Lives of Animals" rubbed me the wrong way. The original attack review has disapperead down the memory hole, but this (still negative) version from 2013 survives. Today, I would probably agree with this "naturalistic animist", LOL.

Marc Bekoff is an animal rights activist and maverick scientist who believe that animals have emotions, feelings and a sense of morality and fair play. This ostensibly scientific book is actually crypto-"religious". Indeed, Bron Taylor characterizes Bekoff as a naturalistic animist in his book "Deep Green Religion". This is not far from the truth.

Bekoff is unabashedly anthropomorphic, and some of his anecdotes are very hard to believe. The author claims to have seen a magpie burial ritual outside Boulder, Colorodo. He mentions a horse with a sense of humour, a horse a bit too close to "clever Hans" to be believable. And then there's the story of three lions which saved a 12 year old girl in Ethiopia from a marauding band of human kidnappers. Other stories are better attested, such as a snake which bonded with a hamster in a Japanese zoo. The employees wanted to feed the hamster to the snake, which quite simply refused to eat it!

Finally, there's the story about chimpanzees "worshipping" waterfalls, which Bekoff regards as the start of religion or numinous feeling. This idea apparently comes from Jane Goodall, a friend of Bekoff and (surprise) a New Age believer - she, too, is mentioned in Taylor's book. Incidentally, I wonder what C.S. Lewis would have said about chimps regarding waterfalls as sublime? (His buddy Barfield would presumably have used it as another evidence for the evolution of consciousness!)

Now, I don't deny that there is *some* kind of continuity between humans and (some) animals, and also *some* kind of convergence, say between humans and intelligent birds. Only a hopeless extremist could deny that animals have something that could be termed "emotions". However, the point of this book seems to be to deny the qualitative difference between humans and animals, and this from a crypto-new agey perspective. That's a much harder proposition to swallow, and would probably not be seen as scientific in polite company.

But by all means, read the book and make up your own minds...