Rating: (262 reviews) Author: Visit Amazon's Temple Grandin Page ISBN : 9780156031448 New from $11.46 Format: PDF
Download for free medical books PRETITLE Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior (A Harvest Book) Paperback – January 2, 2006 POSTTITLE from 4shared, mediafire, hotfile, and mirror link From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Philosophers and scientists have long wondered what goes on in the minds of animals, and this fascinating study gives a wealth of illuminating insights into that mystery. Grandin, an animal behavior expert specializing in the design of humane slaughter systems, is autistic, and she contends that animals resemble autistic people in that they think visually rather than linguistically and perceive the world as a jumble of mesmerizing details rather than a coherent whole. Animals—cows, say, on their way through a chute—are thus easily spooked by novelties that humans see as trivialities, such as high-pitched noises, drafts and dangling clothes. Other animals accomplish feats of obsessive concentration; squirrels really do remember where each acorn is buried. The portrait she paints of the mammalian mind is both alien and familiar; she shows that beasts are capable of sadistic cruelty, remorse, superstition and surprising discernment (in one experiment, pigeons were taught to distinguish between early period Picasso and Monet). Grandin (Thinking in Pictures) and Johnson (coauthor of Shadow Syndromes) deploy a simple, lucid style to synthesize a vast amount of research in neurology, cognitive psychology and evolutionary biology, supplementing it with Grandin's firsthand observations of animal behavior and her own experiences with autism, engaging anecdotes about how animals interact with each other and their masters, and tips on how to pick and train house pets. The result is a lively and absorbing look at the world from animals' point of view.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Scientific American
Temple Grandin has been known to crawl through slaughterhouses to get a sense of what the animals there are experiencing. An autistic woman who as a child was recommended for institutionalization, Grandin has managed not only to enter societys mainstream but ultimately to become prominent in animal research. An associate professor at Colorado State University, she designs facilities used worldwide for humane handling of livestock. She also invented a "hug machine" (based on a cattle-holding chute) that calms autistic children. In Animals in Translation, co-authored with science writer Catherine Johnson, Grandin makes an intriguing argument that, psychologically, animals and autistic people have a great deal in commonand that both have mental abilities typically underestimated by normal people. The book is a valuable, if speculative, contribution to the discussion of both autism and animal intelligence, two subjects on which there is little scientific consensus. Autistics, in Grandins view, represent a "way station" between average people, with all their verbal and conceptual abilities, and animals. In touring animal facilities, Grandin often spots detailsa rattling chain, say, or a fluttering piece of cloththat disturb the animals but have been overlooked by the people in charge. She also draws on psychological studies to show how oblivious humans can be to their surroundings. Ordinary humans seem to be less detail-oriented than animals and autistics. Grandin argues that animals have formidable cognitive capabilities, albeit specialized ones, whereas humans are cognitive generalists. Dogs are smell experts, birds are migration specialists, and so on. In her view, some animals have a form of geniusmuch as autistic savants can perform feats of memory and calculation far beyond the abilities of average people. Some dogs, for example, can predict when their owner is about to have a seizure. Delving into animal emotion, aggression and suffering, Grandin gives tips that may be useful for caretakers of pets and farm animals. She also notes that humans seem to need, and thrive on, the proximity of animals. Indeed, she states provocatively, in the process of becoming human we gave up something primal, and being around animals helps us get a measure of that back.
Kenneth Silber --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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- Paperback: 372 pages
- Publisher: Harcourt; 1st edition (January 2, 2006)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0156031442
- ISBN-13: 978-0156031448
- Product Dimensions: 1 x 5.5 x 8.3 inches
- Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior – January 2, 2006 PDF
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.
I've tried 3 times to finish this book - a book which I had eagerly looked forward to reading - and I've finally given up. On nearly every page I found myself jarring to halt and thinking "But that's not true, what about..." until I came to a complete standstill and called it quits. To give you some background, I am a stay at home mom, have a 4 year degree in zoology, and an interest in animals and animal behavior. Other than that I have no special background or experience that would qualify me to question, much less contradict, the information presented by a phd in animal science (Grandin) or neuropsychiatry (Johnson). And I had genuinely looked forward to reading this book, and was delighted to receive it as a gift from a friend who highly recommended Grandin's works on autism.
Having said all that, on nearly every page I found errors and sweeping over-generalizations, with little or no evidence to defend - or even explain - how the author came to develop them.. The occassional footnote seems thrown in more as an attempt to legitimize the book than to actually enlighten the reader. And while glaring errors such as failing to properly identify insects, birds, fish, etc as animals - something my 4th grader can do with ease - could possibly be attributed to poor editting, the sheer repetition of such errors casts doubts on Grandin's grasp of basic zoology.
More educated reviewers than I have written about the scientific inaccuracies present in this book; I would like to add that the even the anecdotal evidence Ms. Grandin throws in to support her claims is flawed.
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