Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior Reviews

• Fascinating and delightful read

  
  By A3UCQY4IPMMU05 on 2005-01-22
  I savored every moment of reading this book. Grandin has an enthusiasm for her subject that she combines with endless quantities of fascinating research and observations about animals. The book isn't exactly what I expected - I thought it would focus more on her own interactions with animals. However, because the book is so engagingly written and the information is so interesting, the difference between what I expected and what I got didn't diminish my enjoyment in the least.
  
  Grandin does a much better job of making the scientific information more interesting and less dry than in her previous book, Thinking in Pictures, which contained long passages about medications that could be used to treat autistic people. I found that book to be much more uneven. Animals in Translation, however, held on to my attention from the first page to the last. While she also includes a generous amount of scientific information in this book, it is all so interesting and sometimes surprising, that I was never bored. If you have pets or are simply interested in animals and/or biology, this is a must-read.
  
  

• Disappointing and unfocused

  
  By A38VVOTC7EG8YM on 2005-01-25
  This book starts out being very interesting reading. It is well written in an honest and engaging style. The author often states that many of her theories are just that, her own impressions. She relates animal behavior and sensory input to those of an autistic person, as is the objective of this book, as indicated by the title.
  
  I was with her up to Chapter 4, Animal Aggression. During this chapter, she completely abandons the correlation between animals and autistic people and begins what comes very close to nothing more than an extended off-topic rant. This chapter is filled with page after endless page of horrific examples of incidences in which animals (mostly but not limited to dogs) viciously and violently kill or maim their owners, their owners’ children, their neighbors, or their neighbors’ children. On page one of this chapter, she clearly states that “hideous fatal dog attacks on humans” average about 15 a year (“fatal” is the key word here). She calls this amount “tiny.” At this point you are still feeling pretty secure about having little Fido or Fifi on the bed with you or with your children. However, further into this chapter, after scaring the heck out of you with stories that would certainly turn anyone considering getting a dog off the whole idea, she tells us this: “If you are going to get a dog, you can’t plan on preventing dog bites by keeping your dog safely locked up in your house or yard, either, because dogs almost always bite people they know, usually people they know well. Around four and a half million people get bitten every year, and the Centers for Disease Control report that over 75 percent of the dogs in these incidents belong either to the family of the person who got bitten, or a friend.” (This is then cited with a reference.) The next paragraph contains the phrases “Left to their own devices, dogs can become dangerous to other dogs, to cats, and to humans…” and “Dogs are so aggressive by nature…” I have been in a multi-dog (more than 2) household for over 30 years (somehow I have managed to escape being bitten, mauled, or killed by my dogs, apparently miraculously); I read this book before going to sleep a couple of nights in a row, and this chapter had the same effect on me as telling a child about monsters who live in closets and then turning out the light and saying nighty-night. The message seems to be Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid.
  
  Last night I re-checked the title of this book, since I had read at that point most of the Animal Aggression chapter without seeing the word “autistic” or autism in general mentioned anywhere in it. Where’s the relevance here?
  
  The author had pretty well lost me by this point anyway—but I thought maybe it would get back on track when she got off the dog topic (it’s hard not to come away with a very strong impression that she just plain doesn’t like dogs). However, then I noticed that the next chapter was entitled “Pain and Suffering.”
  
  Hmmm. Okay. Enough is enough. Therefore, I can’t offer any opinion or information about this book past the Animal Aggression chapter. It’s not that animal lovers/owners should close their eyes to the reality that all animals, even your adorable fluffy little poodle, are just that—animals—with all the potential behaviors that go along with being an animal. However, Ms. Grandin’s book strays far from its titled objective, “using the mysteries of autism to decode animal behavior,” when she goes on at such length about the dangers inherent in owning a pet dog (or a male deer, or a pig, or a number of other animals). It’s a shame that she lost her focus in the middle of the book; I found the earlier chapters, written from the perspective of an autistic person (thinking in images rather than language), to be helpful in understanding my dogs’ point of view, and I will keep those lessons in mind as I try to figure out their various behavioral quirks.
  
  
  

• Fascinating read

  
  By A1ZZ2EB6FCY8MW on 2004-12-27
  This is a terrific book. I have never read anything quite like it -- anyone who loves animals, and is interested in psychology and the human mind must give this book a look.
  
  Staci Layne Wilson
  
  
  
  

• Goddess of Autism and Animals

  
  By A1EUW15DNXWX7U on 2005-08-25
  Animals in Translation
  Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior
  
  By Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson
  2005 Scribner, 356 pages hardcover
  
  Reviewed by Karen Davis, PhD, President of United Poultry Concerns
  August 10, 2005
  
  "People and animals need to use their faculties, and curiosity is an important faculty. So people and animals need new things to stimulate their brains with." - Temple Grandin, p. 98
  
  "Birds should not be exposed to disturbing noises or visual stimuli or strong vibrations, whether originating inside or outside the house. Visitors should not be allowed without proper supervision, because they could cause birds to panic and injure themselves in their rush to escape and for biosecurity reasons. Wild birds, pets, and other animals should, likewise, not be allowed in the poultry house." - United Egg Producers, "Animal Husbandry Guidelines for U.S. Egg Laying Flocks," 2003 Edition
  
  Temple Grandin is an animal science professor at Colorado State University and a consultant to the meat industry. Catherine Johnson specializes in neuropsychiatry and the brain. Johnson has two autistic sons, and Grandin has autism. Both writers have doctoral degrees and have published other books. In Animals in Translation, they team up to argue that autism is "a kind of way station on the road from animals to humans - putting autistic people in the perfect position to translate `animal talk.'"
  
  People with autism have impaired social and communication skills and do not relate to the emotional states of other people, so it is fair to ask how autistic people actually compare neurologically and experientially with competent adult animals equipped with complex social and communication skills. Are autistic "translators" of animal life common and credible enough to support the contention that they're in a perfect position to do this work? How do autistic perceptions of nonhuman animals compare with those of non-autistic animal empathizers? Bypassing these questions, the authors contend that animals and autistic people are alike in having mostly simple, unambivalent emotions. According to Grandin, animals "never have psychodrama" (apparently she never spent time in a lively chicken yard). "Children don't either," she says (oh, really?). "Emotionally," says Grandin, "children are more like animals and autistic people, because children's frontal lobes are still growing" (pp. 88-89).
  
  This is a familiar grouping: normal human children, mentally-challenged human adults, and nonhuman animals are pitted together as having the same basic level of (in)competence and a simple pictorial view of the world as "a swirling mass of tiny details" (p. 67). Grandin writes that even though autistic people have normal-sized brains, they have "trouble making connections." Their brains "function more like a child's brain or an animal's brain, but for different reasons" (p. 90).
  
  Grandin says she loves animals, especially cows, but fully upholds the human right to own, control, manipulate, mutilate, buy, sell, inseminate, incarcerate, and slaughter animals, ship them into outer space, and have sex with them for business purposes. (See the section, "How to Make a Pig Fall in Love," where she describes men masturbating captive pigs - getting sows to "stand for the man" - and concludes that these pig breeders "respect the animals' nature, and they do a good job with their animals," p.104). Wanton and ignorant abuses are of course unacceptable, but economics and the property status of animals are sacrosanct. The question isn't whether we should slaughter cows but "What does a cow headed to slaughter need in order to have a happy life?" (p. 179)
  
  Matthew Scully, in his book Dominion, marvels at how Grandin tries to balance her purported empathy for animals with "her consistent support of intensive farming and its economic objectives" (p. 239). Grandin is commendable for getting meat industry people to pay a bit of attention to the animals they slaughter (at least when she's around) and to how the slaughterhouse ("packing plant") environment affects animal behavior. Getting cows to walk "nicely" to their death improves the bottom line (animal handling, meat quality and profits) while reducing animal stress.
  
  Animals in Translation is a compilation of often contradictory scientific data, personal anecdotes and conclusions (e.g. animals can't have mixed emotions though examples in the book show otherwise), little of which is owed to the "mysteries of autism." And Grandin is an iffy witness at best. Noting for instance that chickens show pain following debeaking ("trimming"), she goes on: "Ranchers trim chickens' beaks because chickens get into horrible fights and will peck each other to death. The vet trims off the sharp point so the chicken can't use it as a knife blade" (p. 183).
  
  For one thing, it isn't a "vet" who debeaks chickens at the hatchery but an ordinary assembly-line worker, and Grandin says nothing to enlighten the uninformed reader that the pecking to which she refers is abnormal behavior brought on by caging, crowding, boredom, filth, fear, disease, intentional food deprivation and other destructive factors of human origin. (Her discussion, elsewhere, of "psycho hens" focuses on the side-effect of high-strung anxiety in egg-industry hens bred to be pure white and "feed-efficient." She attributes their "beating their own feathers off against the sides of their cages, until they were [are] half nude," and their "violence" to the point of killing each other, to "warped" genetics, without a hint about the role of cages [p. 77]). Indeed, Grandin says several times in the book that horrible fights in the wild are not compatible with survival - " Few adult animals apart from humans ever attack each other so violently that one of them dies" (p. 153).
  
  In the section called "Rapist Roosters," Grandin describes the abnormal violence that has begun to appear in roosters used for breeding "meat-type" offspring (the 6-week old baby birds consumers know as "chicken"). These so-called broiler breeder roosters often destroy the hens they're locked up with in the breeder houses. Noting that "If roosters killed hens in nature, there wouldn't be any chickens," Grandin cites a poultry researcher's claim that these types of roosters attack the hens because an unexpected consequence of breeding them for abnormally fast growth and overgrown muscles for human consumption is that they don't do the courtship dance that tells the hen to crouch into a sexually receptive position. When the hen tries to escape, the rooster attacks her with his spurs or toes and slashes her to death (p. 70). Grandin lulls the lay reader, who may not get her little joke about companies "solving" the problem by "culling" the worst offenders from the flock, into thinking it's been fixed. "I saw some of these chickens just a few months ago," she says, "and they all behaved just as nicely as can be" (p. 77).
  
  This pathological rooster behavior shows what happens when you breed obsessively for a single trait at the expense of overall wellbeing. You get what Grandin calls "warped evolution," and humans adjust to "the bad becoming normal" (p. 72) - a good way to describe the entire factory farm system and "evolved" depravity (not just some tweakable details of it) that Grandin defends.
  
  Her explanation of why "broiler breeder" roosters attack hens isn't satisfactory anyway, as we have these very kinds of chickens here at our sanctuary, and I can tell you that the hens crouch during the spring and summer mating season if you so much as lay your hand gently on the backs, or they will walk or run a little, then stop and crouch abruptly as you come up behind them, at which point I say to them, "At ease."
  
  "Broiler" roosters (and hens) suffer from genetic fragility and unfitness. They're prone to painful lameness, obesity, heart failure, respiratory weakness and infection, heat stress, and juvenile death. Part of what's wrong with them is that they have been artificially bred to become sexually mature at around three months old instead of the normal six months, so that, halfway out of their infancy, if they are being used for breeding, they have adult sex hormones driving them without the neurobiological maturity of an adult bird. Add to this the barren environment and semi-starvation diet to which "broiler breeders" are subjected to control their weight for fertility purposes, plus the fact that the "broiler breeder" rooster's body, legs, and feet are too big for the hens, who themselves are abnormally heavy, disproportioned and slow-moving, have thin, easily torn skin, and nowhere to escape to, and you have a human-engineered sick situation.
  
  Grandin's proclaimed paucity of emotion, compartmentalized emotions, and subnormal sensitivity to pain (pp. 89, 188), her focus on technical fixes and disconnected brain functioning, her contention that slaughterhouse cattle don't know they're going to die and claim of being unable to watch horror movies because the images stay in her conscious mind (because she doesn't have an "unconscious" like normal people, she says on page 92), while having a stomach for the slaughterhouse but no stomach for vegetarianism (it makes her sick, she says, and isn't part of our "animal natures," which, elsewhere she says, humans have outgrown, pp. 180, 307), dents the notion that she's an animal-friendly "savant."
  
  Many of the problems Grandin presents herself as uniquely spotting in the slaughterhouse environment are the kinds of things that an intelligent non-autistic outsider sees on entering an inbred culture comprising attitudes and customs that are so "normal" to the enculturated as to be invisible to them. At the beginning of the book Grandin strategically distances herself from the crude cruelty of the B.F. Skinner school of animal experimentation, in part because, as she rightly observes, it is `totally artificial. What animals do in labs is nothing like what they do in the wild - so what are you actually learning when you do these experiments? You're learning how animals behave in labs" (p. 16).
  
  Actually, the whole world is becoming, and much of it already is, like one of those labs, and Grandin shows no evidence of seeing this. This laboratory is already being extended into outer space, and Grandin is complicit, not because she's autistic but because she epitomizes normal societal schizophrenia - our "love" for animals is compatible with subjecting them, anthropomorphically, to human-contrived dysfunction, degradation, family and social dismemberment, imprisonment, prurience and death, as long as it's done "humanely." If we ever become extinct, "the bad became normal" should be our epitaph.
  ____________
  
  Reviewed by Karen Davis, PhD, United Poultry Concerns, August 2005
  
  United Poultry Concerns is a nonprofit organization that promotes the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl. www.upc-online.org
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• Guidelines for the Food Animal Industry

  
  By A1R8KR91U241H6 on 2005-05-12
  I love books and documentaries about animals, but this one was a BIG disappointment. It should be subtitled, "If You're Going to Kill Animals for Food, Here's How to Slaughter Them with as Little Inconvenience to Yourself and Distress to Them as Possible." I'm not saying that the author's topic isn't worthy. However, the title is misleading. She seems to have limited experience with the behaviors of companion animals or wild animals.
  
  I'm uncomfortable with an author who sells her services to the slaughter industry. How can she expose herself to humans killing animals on a regular basis and stay attuned to the thoughts and messages of animals? Perhaps I'm not as evolved as she is, though.
  
  I couldn't finish the book, and I'm not about to give my copy to anyone as a "gift." It gave me a bad feeling.
  
  
• Couldn't finish it
  By AZPFBHY36UJ56 on 2005-04-09
  When I heard a review of this book I had to have it. I own a hunting dog and thought this would be a good read. I'm always looking to get insight into his head. This didn't help. In fact I couldn't finish the book. She uses her experience with cattle handling and projects it onto all animals. Sorry, I don't buy the fact that cows get scared of the same things dogs get scared of.
  And most of the "scared" examples are from the meat packing industry.
  If you want insight into your dog..spend an hour with him/her on a long walk in the woods-not reading this book.
  
  
• A novel look at animal behavior, but with room for improvement.
  By A3RINLIDX74QLP on 2006-08-28
  What author Temple Grandin has attempted to do here is to use her own experiences as an autistic person to gain insight into the way animals perceive and react to the world around them. She explains that autism seems to impair the ability of the neocortex, or frontal lobes of the brain, to obtain and process information, and that animals likewise have less well-developed frontal lobes than normal humans do. Her theory is that the impairment of an autistic person's brain, in essence, makes them far closer to other animals than to non-autistic humans in how they view the world. As a result, Grandin has largely been able to help people better relate to their pets, and also to design more humane slaughterhouse equipment and more effective auditing procedures for slaughter facilities.
  
  The book starts off well, with Grandin offering many insights that show that, in some ways, she really does have a better understanding of animal perception and thought than "normal" humans. Her principle examples revolve around the fact that animals, like autistic people, are detail-oriented. Their inability to generalize and see the "big picture" often leads to fixations on small things that the average person would not notice. Grandin illustrates this with stories from her inspections of meat plants, where something as simple as an abrupt change in lighting, or a reflection on a puddle - things which have entirely escaped the plant operators' notice - have been causing cattle to balk and refuse to go where they are being directed. She goes on to explain exactly why these details, which don't seem like much of a reason to be afraid, are so disturbing to the animals. Her observations, while not things that would immediately jump out at most people, make a lot of sense once she has explained them. Grandin also includes a useful checklist of things to look for when trying to determine what may be frightening an animal.
  
  However, there are also some not-so-positive aspects to the book. In many places Grandin deviates from her theme of using autism to understand animals, and starts making speculations that not only have no connection to autism, but which seem to have little to back them up at all beyond the author's own opinions. She uses phrases like "statistics have shown" but then fails to elaborate on these supposedly evidential statistics, giving no information on who collected the information, when the study was done, or how large of a sample was used. This particularly comes into play when she discusses pit bulls - a topic she turns to repeatedly throughout the book. Grandin makes no attempt to hide her great distaste for pit bulls (she does not specify whether she is referring to American Pit Bull Terriers in particular, or all of the various breeds that fall under the generic "pit bull" label) and also Rottweilers, German Shepherds, and Chows.
  
  In addition, Grandin puts forth some opinions on dog training that range from strange to absurd. Two things in particular caught my attention. First, she strongly advocates the outdated "alpha" theory for establishing dominance over one's dog. And secondly, I found myself greatly puzzled when she posed her theory that leash laws result in undersocialized dogs. She goes on to reminisce about how, when she was a child, dogs in her neighborhood were allowed to roam free, and that there were rarely any fights. Perhaps this was the case in her neighborhood, but in most places allowing one's dogs to roam free without supervision poses many risks. And leash laws in no way prevent a dog from being well socialized - they just require that a dog owner take an active role in introducing their pets to other animals and humans.
  
  Finally, I was slightly dismayed with Grandin's writing style itself, though I'm not sure whether this is just a lack of writing skill, or a by-product of her autism. Grandin is obviously well-educated and experienced, but the text felt more like a junior high research report with a lot of scientific words thrown in. She often uses the same phrases repetitively, and also uses juvenalized terms for some things. However, the author does admit that written language does not come naturally to her, and that she often draws on a collection of "stock phrases" to communicate, which is what makes me wonder if this aspect of the writing is actually due to the nature of her autism. However, she also makes the mistake of repeatedly using terms like "I believe" or "my opinion is" when putting forth her theories. While these theories obviously ARE her ideas, making statements of the "I think" variety in scientific writing makes the arguments sound weaker, especially when she fails to back up her claims with research or other evidence. Many times she simply concludes an argument with the statement "and I can prove it!" but then fails to go on to give actual proof.
  
  On the whole, the book is a bit of a mixed bag. Though my previous three paragraphs focused on things I found disappointing, I do not mean to give the impression that Grandin's work is all bad. It's certainly not. She does have a lot of good insights, and when she backs up her assertions with specific evidence, her ideas are quite fascinating. I particularly enjoyed the beginning of the book, where she explains the differences in detail-perception between animals, autistic people, and non-autistic people, and also the sections devoted to animal language / communication, and the co-evolution of dogs and humans. In the end I would probably still recommend Grandin's book to readers, with the provision that one should take a slightly hesitant approach in deciding which of her arguments should be readily accepted, and which need further proof.
  
  
• An Autistic Understanding of Animal Behavior
  By A2KG8WLR1AKO12 on 2005-01-22
  I have been reading Animals in Translation for almost a month. There is so much to learn between its covers. Temple Grandin suffers from autism. This lifelong affliction, though, apparently helps her to better understand the animal kingdom. An autistic human being thinks in pictures---and this is probably the way an animal perceives the outer world. Thankfully, I saw no evidence that she shares the fatuous philosophical views of Peter Singer. Animals are not equal to us. Some people may even have to eat them to remain healthy. Vegetarianism is not always a viable option. Grandin does not make the mistake of anthropomorphizing these creatures. On the contrary, she warns that this inevitably hurts them. Are you a dog lover? Her insights on how best develop a viable relationship with your canine friend is alone worth the price of this splendid book.
  
  Do you remember B.F. Skinner? It seems that he was not always the perfect gentleman. Grandin is also not sure if the famous behaviorist theories pass the test of logical consistency. Are you worried about the conditions of our slaughter houses? The author provides recommendations that could alleviate much suffering. Our elected officials should know that Grandin is not all that thrilled by some of the rules and regulations mandated by governmental bureaucrats. Often they backfire and stupidly cause more harm than good. Upton Sinclair wrote his famous, The Jungle, in 1906. Temple Grandin contends that there are still problems which cannot be ignored.
  
  Animals are geniuses in their own unique manner. Pigeons, for example, may be able to tell the difference between a Monet and a Picasso. I can't always do that! Chimpanzees sometimes even manufacture their own tools. We homo sapiens dominate the planet. Still, we should never overlook the contributions of these creatures. The world would be a very lonely place without them. Animals in Translation is a must read. I highly recommend it.
  
  
• Saltshaker needed, forget the grain
  By A1OLBG6DE0XF4J on 2006-06-30
  I got this book as a gift after hearing about it for quite some time, and was really looking forward to it (I am both a cellular neuroscientist and applied animal behaviorist). However I went "uh-oh" the first time the author suggested that birds are not animals. "Oh just an editorial mistake", I thought. But no, later on, I read that insects are not animals either. For a person educated in Animal Science, this author does not seem to have a fundamental grasp of organismal classification, something that is hammered home in Biology 101. I thought maybe the author had explained in the preface that the use of the word "animal" was to be interpreted as "mammal", but paging through carefully, could find no such provision. With such a profound error of animal science repeatedly made, for me the rest of the author's analysis of her observations and of other people's data are legitimately suspect. I'd like to say that this was the only problem I had with the book, but it's not. Over and over, the author speculates on "why this is", offering no data, no studies to back it up (the citation list that is part of the book is dated and spotty at best), and then saying, in effect, "I might be wrong but I'm probably right". I personally found this repeated thinking-out-loud to be frustrating rather than thought-provoking. So if you read this book, do not cite its contents as scientific i.e. evidence-based. It's one person's ruminations on the world of animals and humans. Or more accurately, of humans and other animals.
  
  
• 2 1/2 stars, because it is half a good book
  By A102HQ38U10PPZ on 2006-09-16
  When the author focuses on what she knows - autism, neurobiology, and domestic livestock - this book offers many insights. By applying some excellent existing research in neurobiology about what animals are truly capable of perceiving and feeling (read some of the referenced books for confirmation of emotions in animals) and applying her own experiences with domestic livestock and insights founded in her autism (a much more visual world than "normal" people (her word, not mine)), Dr. Grandin shows how a more visual, detail-oriented animal encounters the world.
  
  Sadly, Dr. Grandin - perhaps wanting to appeal to a wider audience - tries also to include predator species such as our companion dogs and cats in her book. Her lack of direct experience with predator species is palpable in everything she writes about them. Her data sources are extremely outdated(Monks of New Skete, anyone?) and her own discussions are highly anecdotal ("my neighbor's dog..." "my childhood cat..."). Her word choices reveal her discomfort with the subject matter (much use of terms such as "probably" "pretty much" "nobody knows why"). Nor does she make any effort to validate her suppositions. Her "Troubleshooting" chapter should be avoided like the plague (recommending a shock collar for chasing behavior can create aggression, as the dog learns to associate the chase object with pain).
  
  If you read this book, take it with a grain of salt and by no means use it as your only reference. Her own references are excellent and can be used for further study. Also, for those interested primarily in dogs, Patricia McConnell has an exceptional new book, For the Love of a Dog, that is grounded in more recent data and a lifetime of working with dogs.
  
  
  
  
  
• New Insights, The Same Old Same-Old, Or Both?
  By A1B451QKRY2KRS on 2005-08-14
  
  Let me just say up front that this is a wonderful book in many ways, and offers a unique, and in most cases, accurate view of animal consciousness. My own area of expertise is canine behavior, so I was really looking forward to Temple Grandin's perspective on that. She's absolutely right when she says that animals are specifically geared toward perceiving vivid sensory details rather than the way the human brain tends to automatically generalize things and gather such details into conceptual, symbolic, or "meaningful" chunks.
  
  I hope all dog owners will read this book and finally realize that their dogs are both "smarter" and not quite as smart as they thought they were. I tell my dog training clients that dogs are natural-born geniuses at pattern recognition--which goes beyond the sense of smell, by the way, which Grandin focuses on, and includes visual data (body language) and aural input (vocalizations)--but that they're innately incapable of symbolic, conceptual, or linguistic thought processes.
  
  So imagine my disappointment when instead of continuing to break new ground, Grandin and her co-author trot out the washed-up alpha theory* with most, if not all, of its attendant fallacies firmly in place. Just where I was hoping to get her unique perspective on something truly important (at least to me and the dogs I train), her insight fails her and she falls back on old, outdated, and thoroughly discredited research.
  
  This is maddening since her views on aggression are semi-accurate (most aggression in dogs IS based on fear). But how can she believe in this myth of alpha, especially since she's put forth the position that animals aren't capable of symbolic and conceptual thinking, and for the alpha theory to be true it would require dogs and wolves to be able to think this way?
  
  Let me make another thing clear: dogs are not inherently dangerous! They are genetically programmed to want to attain a state of harmony with other dogs and with people. It's what they live for. In fact, this is what the pack instinct is really about since it's what enables canids to hunt large prey, by working together in group harmony. The primary thing that makes dogs dangerous is the way they've been mistreated by people who've been brainwashed about having to be the dog's pack leader, which has been woefully misused in many cases as an excuse to hurt, scare, intimidate, and punish these innately loving and sweet-natured animals... (whew! -- glad I got that off my chest...)
  
  Anyway, that's why I'm only giving this book three stars. Grandin has done good work, at least partially. We should all be thankful for her insights and her unique perspective. Just ignore most of what she says about canine social behavior.
  
  *Wolf experts don't even like to use the word alpha anymore because, as Dr. L. David Mech puts it, "it falsely implies a hierarchical system in which each wolf assumes a place in a linear pecking order," (Canadian Journal of Zoology, 2002).
  
  
  
• NO stars for this book!!
  By A3MHIARWR1TM75 on 2006-09-04
  What a bunch of high school hallway gossip! The author does not know the difference between white and albino! The 'genetics' discussions on color (which includes people, chickens, horses, and dogs - all of it suspect) and mutts vs. purebred dogs are total claptrap! I confess, I couldn't get past page 87 when the author explains that 'one of the reasons wolves turned into dogs was that nursing human mothers probably adopted orphaned wolf cubs and nursed them at their breasts along with their human babies.' WHAT?? A waste of my hard-earned $. Having read those parts I cannot believe anything that went before or that follows, not that I'm reading any further. How is a multi-published author allowed to put such uneducated 'information' into print? And now she's influenced readers -- a terrible situation. Publisher, where are your pre-publication reviews? Shame on you for allowing this ignorant speculation to be published!!
  
  
• Landmark book.
  By ACKJO9BY52WXO on 2005-03-13
  Animals in Translation: Using the mysteries of autism to decode animal behavior.
  I will never think about animals, and about autism, and about "normal" people quite the same way again. This is a landmark book.

  The book is badly organized. You will have to read every page. You may not be interested in the long pages where she talks about slaughter houses, but then right in the middle of a paragraph you suddenly come across a bit of wisdom that you would not want to have missed. Right then you must underline it or you will never find it back again.

  The upshot of this book is that animals do not have a fully functioning frontal lobe, nor do autistic people, and she tells us throughout the book what that is like, over and over again until you start to get a deep understanding of what it is like. We get a better understanding of ourselves too. The frontal lobe "puts it all together", and having put it all together, we race over the details like a speed boat over water. We do not see the details. An autistic person on the other hand, can not help but see them. He sees all the details, and only the details. He is overwhelmed by them. He sees all forty shades of brown. He can not see the forest for the trees, and more trees, and more trees. He hears every tone. He smells every odor. His life is a jumble of details. As you might expect, her book is rich in details about her own life and about all the animals she knows and when you emerge at the other end of the book, you feel immersed. Being a "normal" person you can not remember all the details, but you "know" something about these people's lives, and about animals' lives in a way you could never get from a text book. And yet, at the same time, she also has a doctorate and she does her own research. She has the training to write the text book, but then, being autistic, she can not. She does not hold the whole picture and therefore it remains a badly organized book. That is the message. That is what it is like to be autistic. That is what it is like to be an animal.

  Nicholas Dormaar
  British Columbia, Canada.
  
  

• The Meatpacker's Friend
  By A3TO9KEQZ2N0Y3 on 2005-04-16
  I bought this book because I am involved in animal rescue, and I hoped it would have insights to help me with my more difficult cases. Unfortunately, I was unable to get through it. There are frequent detailed references to the work the author has done helping slaughterhouses get cattle to behave so that the meatpacking industry can kill more animals more efficiently with less damage to the meat, and hence greater profit. I may have missed it, but I did not see any indication that any of this was really to mitigate the conditions for the benefit of the animals being slaughtered -- it was to benefit the industry. Because my work is in helping animals that have been abandoned or abused by humans, I found this very disagreeable, and so did not finish the book.
  
  I do not recommend this book for people who care about animal welfare.
  
  
• fascinating
  By A3A5D29CBODWIN on 2005-02-01
  I am a wildlife rehabilitator and do a good deal of reading about animals and their needs/behavior etc. 'Animals in Translation' is the most facinating book on animals that I've ever come across. It includes examples of wildlife as well as domestic and farm animals. It's beautifully written and the author makes very complicated information completely comprehensible to the non scientific person. In her book, Ms Grandin has opened the door to the mysteries of the animal kingdom and in doing so, made us wiser to their plight of living amongst humans. This book has answered many questions and given me a whole new perspective on our furry friends. Anyone who is curious about animals, has a pet or works with animals, should be reading the material written in this book.
  
  
• Will Change The Way We Think of Animals Forever
  By A16O24VN3D04W on 2005-01-28
  What is so wonderful about this book, besides the fact that it's an engrossing read, is that you will never think of animals, especially your dogs and cats, the same way again. Using existing scientific work and her brilliant analogy to autism, she gives the only fresh view of the animal kingdom in centuries. Full of brilliant anecdotes, engagingly written, and fascinating throughout, this book is to animal studies what The Origin of Species to evolution. Be in on the revolution--read this book!
  
  
• Interesting, But Can't Recommend It
  By A340ECSASO3LQV on 2005-03-02
  While I admit this book has fascinating information that I had not seen before, I was distracted by the emphasis on the meat packing industry. That's only logical since one of the authors has spent 30 years working on more humane ways of handling animals. It's not the whole book, but it was almost enough for me to put the book down. In terms of autism, I have to agree with other person who said that they felt she got off the topic. There are just so many times she can say that being autistic, she is more visual than verbal. Ok, I get it. Then she says it a second time, a third time , fourth, .... Better editing would have improved this book.
  
  
• turned off to Temple, Animal Behaviors and Autism
  By A13VVJE5DGPLBL on 2005-03-19
  Where's the beef? It is taking me so long to read this book. Expecting it to connect, relate or explain Autism. That is, when a Ph.D authors a book and subtitles it Using the Mysteries Of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior you would expect to learn more about this mysterious inflection and evidence that it does or does not relate to Autism. I learned more about large clinic animals then I cared to know about and nothing about Autism.Ms. Grandin is a role model for many families who have children with Autism. However, the author mislead the audience by leading us to the meat packing industry and leaving us there. She has Autism--the co-author has two son's with Autism--where's the beef? tell us something new related to Autism . Temple , us how you see the world-
  
  
• Sporadically Interesting
  By A3N10W4T5GBPR2 on 2005-05-04
  Parts of this book provide interesting tidbits about cattle and pets from an expert. If you want to know how to make slaughterhouses more humane or why a mutt is likely to behave more nicely than a purebred dog, you will like parts of this book.
  But much of the book strays beyond the author's area of expertise, and makes many confident assertions that sound suspicious or wrong.
  For instance, from page 211: "All intensely emotional learning is permanent. ... no one born before 1958 is ever going to forget where they were when Kennedy was shot". Yet well-known research by Ulric Neisser and others says those memories are wildly inaccurate.
  Another example from page 17: "But other times thinking in pictures is an advantage. During the 1990s I knew all the dot-coms would go to hell, because when I thought about them the only images I saw were rented office space and computers that would be obsolete in two years. There wasn't anything real I could picture". By this reasoning, Webvan and Worldcom should have done better than Google and Paypal.
  If you're more interested in autism and how it affects the study of animals than you are in livestock or pets, then you will find Songs of the Gorilla by Dawn Prince-Hughes a more informative and eloquent book. Or if you're only interested in autism, read the relevant chapter of Shadow Syndromes instead (which is also coauthored by Catherine Johnson, who doesn't appear to have had much influence on this book).
  
  
• Divide the science from opinion.
  By A36IBAWBVU5NT9 on 2005-11-24
  This is the fourth co-authored book featuring Temple Grandin as one of the authors, here together with Catherine Johnson, the author of 'Shadow Syndromes' and its an interesting combination of authors who have come together on this book.
  
  One of the myths Temple Grandin, perhaps unintentionally, busts in this book is the view that people on the autistic spectrum are not interested in other minds.
  
  As a person labelled in infancy as autistic and rediagnosed in adulthood with Asperger's Syndrome, Temple displays an intense, obsessive observation of detail of her animal subjects which, whilst its not the work of a zoologist specialising in animal psychology, her contribution to this book comes from the heart of Temple's work as an engineer renowned for designing humane slaughter facilities for cattle.
  
  Already emerging as a clearly scientific mind in childhood, Temple is clearly the born scientist and here she turns that scientific mind to the study of animals, in particular perhaps those she has the most experience with, cattle and extrapolating many of those experiences to dogs and other animals.
  
  Whilst humans may fastidiously study animals to the degree they imagine or believe they know how they think, doesn't necessarily follow, however, that this is so.
  
  Whilst Temple thinks in pictures rather than in words, visually rather than auditorily, this doesn't necessarily mean that animals think this way even if, like her, as a scientist, they notice and react to detail. If a water bowl is placed on the ground for a new dog, it doesn't necessarily recognise what it is, even if its seen 20 water bowls. But if you tap the bowl or flick the surface of the water it comes running to the bowl. Does the cat which has already had 10 similar toys, know what the new toy is visually until it taps it and smells it? Hence, is this visual thinking or is it kinesthetic in which the animal can't interpret things once they are moving, making noise or somehow in action? Whilst those in educational psychology would use awareness of three main modalities of processing; auditory, visual and kinesthetic, Temple seems to have little grasp that there is as vast a difference between the visual and kinesthetic worlds of processing as their are between the visual and auditory.
  
  Whilst not all people on the autistic spectrum have deeply scientific minds (for this is a common stereotype) nor think in pictures, it may true that humans have lost a valuable piece of understanding and key to empathising which they can find through connection with animals, or perhaps, more to the point, that animals retain a 'system of sensing' as captured in Donna Williams' (another autistic author) book, Autism And Sensing; The Unlost Instinct (1998). If this is so, then where Donna suggests we re-discover our capacity to use this kinesthetic system of sensing that we lost in moving into using our interpretive minds and language, then here Temple shows us that scientific minds of verbal people which rely on interpretive thinking (whether visual or auditory) may find a pathway to re-discovering this system of sensing through relationships with animals.
  
  Studying animals as a scientist is a different way of grasping their world than that of feeling their systems and nature through being with them without analysing them. What Temple shows us in this book is that even the most clinical, logical, emotionally detached and scientific of minds can attempt to build a capacity for empathic understanding and put that into occupational uses, in Temple's particular case, within the slaughter industry.
  
  
• Party Line
  By A2S5RQJSENI1YO on 2006-01-05
  This is probably the worst and most negative book I have ever read concerning animals. It is a party line using statistics that are outdated and unproven and nothing but hearsay by those who are in the business of destroying animals for profit. Her concept of dog behavior is way off base. She obviously is listening to others and has little or no hands on experience and if so with breeds that are cited in the book but not part of her experience. It is a shame that such a book will reach those who are seeking real help will receive negative information that is not true. Associations and professionals that exploit animals for profit are usually not very good sources and always crunch the numbers to accommodate their own gain. Example: neutering and spaying dogs. All nonsense. I find this book offensive but will keep it as a reference to the negative side and an example of what is not true. I was required to choose a rating star but I had to choose 1 as minus is not available. Barbara Sanders
  
  
• Animals are Smarter than we Realize
  By A7M9BM0YMK49S on 2005-01-24
  This story is told in a straight forward and fascinating way. The author uses her own experiences to enlighten the reader on how animals think and perceive. She uses humor as well as many anecdotes to underscore her points on animal behavior and the brain. Although quite scholarly, this author never leaves the reader behind. She quickly explains concepts and terms that might bog down the non-professional. I have friends waiting in line to borrow my book. Two thumbs up!
  
  
• Where are the facts?
  By A2DCQWB3N5GMW3 on 2006-01-12
  For a book written by someone with a PhD, I was quite surprised at the lack of facts in this book. There are much better books on animal behavior out there, and they've been out there for a while. Especially about dogs. For example: "The other end of the leash" by Patricia McConnell, and "Culture Clash" by Jean Donaldson. I see nothing new or innovative about the ideas in this book.
  
  However, as a cute book of anecdotes about animals acting in concordance with the author's suppositions, this book is mildly entertaining.
  
  
• Remarkably poor book
  By A3R42T18JHK1YZ on 2007-05-18
  This book is engagingly written. It is, however, quite full of factual inacurracies. This is the first book in nearly a decade I declined to finish because of the level of inaccuracies. There are the minor ones (for example, she refers to insects as not animals - she meant they were not mammals, I think) that show sloppy editorial review. There are also substantial ones (for example, she refers to the collie breed as being stupid because poor genetics have morphed their brain case; this is a theory first put forth around 1900 and conclusively disproved numerous times, and is now considered entirely discredited). Even her description of cattle behavior, a topic on which she has substantial traction, is apparently dangerously inaccurate according to 2 friends who grew up on dairy farms.
  While the book is engagingly written the number of substantive factual errors suggest the best thing you can do with this book is discard it. Ms. Grandin is well respected in the field of autisim research, I hope she is a lot more careful talking about autisim.
  
  
• OK - Sing Along "If I could talk with the animals..."
  By A1JYQVP71WHBTL on 2005-10-02
  Dr. Grandin does not talk with the animals, but she takes the time to think deeply about what is on their minds. While many of us will walk into a situation with animals and think nothing of it, Grandin will take the time to deeply observe the environment and think about how she would react to it as an animal.
  
  Her fascination with animals has lead her into a career where she advises stockyards on humane treatment of animals. Her rules for running a stockyard are simple - she breaks it down into a short list, mostly an observational one. If the animals limp, cry out, need to be prodded, or are not humanely killed, she will flunk a facility. She says that a facility does not need a long worksheet to check off - it simply has to meet her short list of rules, which are result oriented. If the animal is uncomfortable in one of the ways described, no amount of paperwork is going to cover it up.
  
  Grandin describes the emotional makeup of animals, mostly focusing on hoofstock, which are her professional focus. She does describe at great length, dog behavior. There are different kinds of aggression, not just one, and she does an excellent job of describing why an animal will behave in an aggressive fashion.
  
  She does make some generalizations that I don't necessarily agree with. She thinks animals with pale pelts and blue eyes show a tendency toward instability. She also asserts that marmalade cats are fearful. (She's never met some of the affable ginger cats that I've met.) This probably arises from the fact that her book tends to be observational rather than a compilation of other writings. She does say that she is visual and not verbal, which explains why her personal experiences have more weight in the narrative.
  
  She claims that her ability to view the world as an animal would comes from her autism, but I honestly think she is just gifted with a kind of patience and sensitivity that not very many other people share. (I say this as the friend of an autistic person and a friend of a parent of an autistic child).
  
  I will say that because of how her mind works and how she is visual and not verbal that the language of the book is very accessible to the lay person. She does not bludgeon us with technical vocabulary, which many PhDs will do in their books. Her sentences are short and simple and she gets her point across in a very concise way without a lot of jargon and technical terms. (We know a horse is a horse - of course, of course - and don't need words like "equid" and so on.)
  
  As an urban person, I found the book valuable in understanding cattle and horses, which are not really in my world. Next time I see a cow, I will have to resist the urge to lie down in the field and see if she will come up and say hello...
  
  
• just...poor
  By A1OWW6OMXSCS6G on 2006-07-20
  I wanted to like this book. I was awed by some of the reviews, fascinated by the notion put forth by many reviewers (as well as TG herself) that she has some special connection and understanding of animals. No. Frankly, I don't believe she does.
  
  I have read many books by people who work with animals (Jean Donaldson, Suzanne Clothier for starters) that share a wealth of information and understanding.
  
  Honestly, I was more than disappointed in this book. I could not find an insight that was new, and there were some statements that I found simply bizarre.
  
  Moreover, there is a basic disconnect here in the idea that a person with a supposedly fine-tuned connection to animals could spend a career developing better ways to slaughter them. I was willing to suspend any judgement on that while reading the book, but I return to that question again.
  
  
• For me, a guide to understanding all the mistakes I've made
  By A1LT7LA7GELTBY on 2006-10-24
  About a year and a half ago, one of our two small dogs rejected her crate. The crate was a small metal cage that she would sleep in at night. For the first five years of her life she had been happy, even eager, to get in at night. But suddenly, it seemed that the very thought of the cage terrified her. She would spend the entire night throwing herself against the sides, hitting the door with her paw, and scratching the plastic tray that was the bottom piece in an attempt to dig her way out. About this time my wife very wisely left for Sweden for several weeks, and after ten days without sleep I capitulated and let the dog stay out of the cage at night.
  
  I once enjoyed a blissfully dog-free bed. Today I sometimes wake up with a wet nose touching mine. If only I had read this book before that happened. Temple Grandin is an autistic and an expert on animal behavior, and she is convinced that the two go together. Whether or not her theory that some of the changes in the brains of autistic people mirror the natural condition of many animals is correct or not, the power of her insights are undeniable.
  
  She skillfully leads the reader through the mental life of animals, emphasizing the areas where the way our brains process information is so different from those of animals that we often don't even consider that there might be alternatives. For instance, in one section she suggests that animals experience pain much less keenly than humans do, noting that often they will show no signs of discomfort even when they are clearly injured. On the other hand, she says, fear may be as debilitating for animals as severe pain is for humans. Both humans and animals experience both pain and fear, but animals experience fear as the ultimate unpleasantness, just as humans experience pain.
  
  Other sections expose other facets of animals behavior that seem nonsensical at first, but seem perfectly logical when placed in the correct context. Many of her lessons involve putting herself in the place of the animals involved, on the theory that her autistic brain will let her naturally see their motivations. The amazing thing is how often it seems to work, producing not just an enthralling book but concrete advances in animal handling systems for meat packing plants and horse trainers. After reading this book I'm convinced that I could have solved the problem with my dog by finding what small detail was causing her to panic and changing it - examples in the book show that it could have been something as simple as painting the cage or moving it from one corner to another.
  
  I can't recommend this book highly enough, especially if you want to keep your dog on the floor and the bed to yourself.
  
  
• Kudos to Dr. Grandin
  By A4M6S8X4S8DYB on 2005-03-09
  I have never rated a book on Amazon and I have bought hundreds. This book is a marvel. Dr. Grandin summarizes much of what we know (and do not know) about animal behavior, cognition, pain, specificity, and how 'smart' they are. It is a wonderful summary of what the science actually shows or is beginning to show, which will turn the old school animal behaviorists on their heads.
  Also key to her message is animal welfare; she has designed animal processing facilities that process over 50% of all meat produced in the U.S. and her animal welfare 5 point survey method of plants is used by McDonalds, Wendys and Burger King to determine if they will buy from a specific meat plant or not.
  Kudos to Dr. Grandin. It is a spectacular read if you are an animal lover, if you are close to someone who is autistic, or if you are completely confused about the complexities of whether or not to eat meat, breed animals or are wondering what evidence there is (or isn't) to back up our feelings about our place on this planet with animals.
  
  
  
• Cognition 101
  By AFVBYTVP8C4LW on 2005-05-28
  First, I love this book. Second, the title is somewhat misleading and many readers should be warned. If you are looking for an improvement on 'The Horse Whisperer', this isn't your book. There isn't anything on talking to your pet or animals at the zoo. The author points this out on the first or second page, which leaves me wondering if the title was attached after the fact by a marketing guru. A more literal title would be something like "Using neuroscience and slaughter house malfunctions to understand mammal behavior" would be more accurate. There is a great deal of violence described in this book, and almost zero sentimentality. It will horrify many.
  
  Apparently, tales of the slaughter house don't turn my stomach. I loved it.
  
  Grandin launches into a bold description of animal/human psychology based on emotion rather than logic. Since Descartes published "I think, therefore I am (and animals don't, so they are not)," Western Philosophy has been trying to remove emotion from our understanding of 'being human'. Emotion has become an evolutionary hang-over which the enlightened learn to defeat. Grandin puts emotion back into the logic of living, and does a great job of demonstrating her thesis with neuroscience and evolutionary theory.
  
  The narrative and outlook resonates with me. She isn't dividing the world into 'human' and 'animal' domains. When she is talking about translating animals, she is talking about translating the human animal, too.
  
  Grandin's basic insight comes from her efforts to relate to 'normal' humans. She writes, "The difference between a normal person's mental clutter and the intense, detailed absorption of an autistic person's visual concentration closely resembles the difference between humans and animals." How does she know that animal thought parallel's her manner of 'thinking in pictures'? Initially, she simply assumed as much. It was only natural to assume other beings see the world as you do. In her case, it was a lucky guess, producing effective results and a successful career. Now that she can reflect on her success, she concludes it came from thinking in pictures, as non-humans do, but being enough of a 'language' thinker to communicate this insight to the rest of us. Normal people, Grandin writes, don't experience their perceptions directly. Instead, they experience a neocortex filtered summary which is assumed to be reality. For example, she tells of an experiment where subjects were told to watch a basketball video and count the number of passes. While they intently counted, a gorilla walks out onto the center court and jumps up and down. Over 50% of the subject failed to notice the gorilla. It wasn't 'expected', so they didn't see it.
  
  Grandin is agitating for a revolution in how cognition is understood. She is over turning the enthroned theories that animals only respond to 'operant conditioning' (rewards for desired behavior). In its place she proposes 'social learning', an ability to learn from the example of peers. She argues that operant conditioning fails as an evolutionary process. If an antelope calf only learned to fear mountain lions after the experiencing a face-to-face encounter, there wouldn't be any antelopes to evolve. Instead, calves learn by watching the reaction of peers and accepting that emotional response as reality. Social learning theory has recently gained momentum with the discovery of 'mirror neurons' that provide mammals with exactly this ability.
  
  The details are sometimes hard to grasp, but well worth the effort.
  
  
• A Book of Temple Grandin's Guesses
  By A3KSB7MCLIV3UO on 2006-08-18
  The first sentence in the book is "People who aren't autistic always ask me about the moment I realized I could understand the way animals think."
  
  It should have been "People who aren't autistic always ask me about the moment I SOMEHOW GOT THE NOTON THAT I could understand the way animals think." There's no proof in this book, no good evidence, just Ms. Grandin's anecdotes and speculations.
  
  Noticing a lot of detail because you have autism and being able to use this ability to design humane slaughterhouses does not translate into thinking like animals think.
  
  The book does offer many clear, simple descriptions of scientists' research. So if you don't know anything about animal research, these descriptions could be a good place to start.
  
  
  

• Thinking in Pictures, Expanded Edition: My Life with Autism
• The Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships: Decoding Social Mysteries Through the Unique Perspectives of Autism
• Emergence: Labeled Autistic
• For the Love of a Dog: Understanding Emotion in You and Your Best Friend
• Developing Talents: Careers for Individuals with Asperger Syndrome and High-Functioning Autism