Yoerg, Sonja I. Clever as a fox; animal intelligence and what it can teach us about ourselves.

Harvard Univ. Press. 228p. bibliog. index. c2001.0-674-00870-7. $15.95. SA

This is a book about bias--a largely unconsidered bias about animal species. Is a dog smarter that a pig? If not, why do we keep one in the house and one on our plate? Why is it an insult to be called birdbrain, when there are things birds can do with navigation that we don't begin to understand? How can we make so many assumptions, when we don't even understand what intelligence is? "Simple appeals to evolutionary continuity just won't cut it. Our nepotistic intuitions may tell us that the chimp must be doing something more complicated and interesting than the firefly. Why else would it have such a large brain? But what if I told you that the octopus has the biggest, fanciest nervous system of any invertebrate? We must be very careful to state our biases clearly ... we don't know enough to make sweeping generalizations about what behavior says about intelligence in any particular kind of animal." (p.54-55)

Sonja Yoerg is a former researcher and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley and at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. Clever as a Fox is a book of questions. The questions are geared to poke holes in our assumptions, biases and all-round ignorance of the animal world. It is also a book that shows we know too little to jump to so many conclusions about the relative intelligence of animals. Even though there are more questions than answers, this is a welcome addition to the field.

Katherine E. Gillen, Libn., Luke AFB Lib., AZ