Notes
Inside Cover Blurb
- Mother deer that grieve? Horses that feel shame? Squirrels that adopt their grandchildren?
- We humans tend to assume that we are the only living things able to experience feelings intensely and consciously. But have you ever wondered what’s going on in an animal’s head?
- From the leafy forest floor to the inside of a bee hive, The Inner Life of Animals takes us microscopic levels of observation to the big philosophical, ethical and scientific questions. We hear the stories of a grateful humpback whale, of a hedgehog who has nightmares, and of a magpie who commits adultery; we meet bees that plan for the future, pigs who learn their own names and crows that go tobogganing for fun. And at last we find out why wasps exist.
- As more and more researchers are discovering, animals experience a rich emotional life that is ready to be explored. The Inner Life of Animals will show you these living things in a new light and will open up the animal kingdom like never before.
- Peter Wohlleben spent over twenty years working for the forestry commission in Germany before leaving to put his ideas of ecology into practice. He now runs an environmentally friendly woodland in Germany, where he is working towards the return of primeval forests, as well as caring for both wild and domestic animals. Wohlleben has been celebrated for his distinctive approach to writing about nature; he brings to life groundbreaking scientific research through his observations of nature and the animals he lives amongst. He is also the author of international bestsellers including The Hidden Life of Trees and The Inner Life of Animals.
Amazon Reviews
- Always fascinating… Wry, avuncular, careful and kind, Wohlleben guides us from one creature to the next.
→ Richard Kerridge, Guardian
- Wohlleben presents short chapters in bite-sized portions, so the reader has a constant sense of learning something new on almost with every page ... The formula is provably winning. I still felt I was on a robust learning curve as subjects as diverse as motherly love, gratitude, deception, desire, shame and knowledge of good and evil were explored one by one ... fascinating.
→ Katharine Norbury, Observer
- Wohlleben is connecting with something big here… He truffles up some wonderful animal facts, too… Wohlleben’s empathy with animals can be touching and illuminating
→ James McConnachie, Sunday Times
- The Inner Life of Animals will rock your world. Surprising, humbling, and filled with delight, this book shows us that animals think, feel, and know in much the same way as we do – and that their lives are, to them, as precious as ours are to us.
→ Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul Of An Octopus
- [Wohlleben] neatly combines anecdotes and scientific evidence in his search for the answers to some basic questions, such as do animals feel things the way we do?... Wohlleben has no doubt that all animals have a rich inner life. By the end of this delightful, surprising book, most readers will be persuaded that he is right.
→ Nick Rennison, Daily Mail
- The tone is friendly and informal and the prose largely free of scientific jargon… Entertaining and thought-provoking
→ Mark Cocker, Spectator
- Wouldn’t it be fascinating to know what animals think? Here, Peter Wohlleben explores a range of bestial emotions we didn’t know existed… unveiling remarkable insights into their hidden lives in the process
→ Country Living
- A fascinating read
→ Sam Swannack, on Countryfile
- Peter Wohlleben’s convincing, highly readable stories about free-living and domestic animals show there’s much overlap between how humans and other animals experience bonding, loss, and the great, shared themes of life.
→ Carl Safina, author of Beyond Words: What Animals Think And Feel
Epilogue2
- When I look at animals, I like to make analogies to people, because I cannot imagine that they feel so very differently from us. There’s a good chance I’m right. The idea that there was an abrupt break3 in the course of evolution, and that at some point everything was reinvented, is an idea whose time is past. The only major point of contention today is whether animals can think4; that’s what we do best, after all.
- However, what is so important for us could be less important for our fellow creatures — otherwise they would have developed as we did. Is profound thought something that is absolutely necessary? It’s certainly not necessary for a satisfying, peaceful life. When we’re relaxing on holiday, what’s going through our mind is: ‘I feel great and I don’t have to think about anything at all.’ We can experience joy and peace without giving anything much thought, and that is the crux of the matter: emotions have no need for intelligence. As I have stressed, emotions steer instinctive programming and are therefore vital for all5 species, and therefore all species experience them to a greater or lesser degree. Whether an animal reflects on these emotions, prolongs them through reflection or relives them later is less important. Of course it’s nice that we can do exactly this, and perhaps by doing so we get to experience these moments in our lives more intensely. Score one for us. Admittedly that works for less enjoyable moments as well, so score one for the animals, which makes us even6.
- Why is there still so much resistance to the idea that our fellow creatures have the capacity to feel joy and to suffer? This resistance comes from some scientists, but above all from politicians who answer to farmers. Mostly they are protecting the cheap methods used by factory farms to house and handle animals, such as castrating piglets without anaesthetic7, as I mentioned earlier. And then there’s hunting, which claims the lives of hundreds of thousands of large mammals and many birds every year, and which in its current form8 is simply no longer appropriate.
- When all the arguments have been made and it’s clear we’re getting to the point where we must grant animals way more skills than we usually do, the knockout punch is delivered: the charge of anthropomorphism. People who compare animals to humans, so the argument goes, are unscientific. They are wishful - maybe even mystical - thinkers. In the heat of the fray, an essential truth we all learned in school is overlooked: a human being is, from a purely biological perspective, an animal and therefore not so very different from other species. It follows that a comparison between people and animals is not too much of a stretch, especially since we can only relate to and empathise with things we understand. And so it makes sense to take a closer look at those animals in which we can detect emotions and mental processes similar to our own. This comparison is easier with feelings such as hunger and thirst, whereas comparing human and animal experiences of joy, grief or compassion makes some people’s hair stand on end.
- The goal is not to make animals seem like us, but to help us understand them better. Most importantly, these comparisons serve to point out that animals are not dim-witted creatures clearly stuck a level below us on the evolutionary scale, creatures that experience only pale imitations of our rich range of sensations for pain and other such feelings. No. People who understand that deer, wild boar and ravens lead their own lives, perfect in their own way, and have a lot of fun while they’re at it might even respect animals as insignificant as the tiny weevils that rummage around, contented and happy, in the leaf litter of ancient forests.
- One reason there is still doubt about the emotional world of animals might be that many emotions and mental processes are not yet clearly defined even in people. In this context, let’s remember what we said about happiness, gratitude or even just thinking - all terms that have been difficult to describe. How can we understand something in animals that we can’t even clearly grasp in ourselves? Pure science, which today is defined by its demand for objectivity, might not help us advance, because it requires us to set aside our emotions. However, because people are mostly driven by their emotions, as we saw in the context of instincts, we possess the appropriate antennae to recognise stirrings of emotion in others. And why should these antennae fail, just because the other in question is an animal and not a person?
- We evolved in a world full of other species, and we had to survive despite them and with them. It was surely just as important to be able to read the intentions of wolves, bears or wild horses as it was to read the faces of strangers. No doubt our senses can sometimes deceive us and we can read too much into the behaviour of dogs and cats. But I’m convinced that in the majority of cases our intuitions are correct. Current scientific discoveries come as no real surprise to animal lovers. All they do is give us more confidence to trust our own feelings where animals are concerned.
- When people reject acknowledging too much in the way of emotions in animals, I have the vague feeling that there’s a bit of fear that human beings could lose their special status. Even worse, it would become much more difficult to exploit animals. Every meal eaten or leather jacket worn would trigger moral considerations that would spoil their enjoyment. When you think how sensitive pigs are, how they teach their young and help them deliver their own children later in life, how they answer to their names and pass the mirror test, the thought of the annual slaughter of 250 million of these animals across the European Union alone is chilling.100
- And it doesn’t stop with animals. As science has discovered and you might well already have read, we must now acknowledge that trees and other plants have feelings and even a capacity to remember. How, then, are we supposed to feed ourselves in a morally acceptable manner if we are now justified in feeling sorry for plants, too? Like many species, we cannot photosynthesise to create our own food, so we have to eat living entities to survive. The choices we make are very personal. They might depend on where we live or the culture in which we were brought up. Ultimately, though, each of us has to decide what we will eat. My hope is that what you have learned in this book will help you make informed decisions for the future.
- From my personal perspective, I am suggesting that we infuse our dealings with the living beings with which we share our world with a little more respect, as we once used to do, whether those beings are animals or plants. That doesn’t mean completely doing without them, but it does mean a certain reduction in our level of comfort and in the amount of biological goods we - consume. As a reward, if we then have happier horses, goats, chickens and pigs; if we can then observe contented deer, martens or ravens; if one day we can listen in when the ravens call their names, then a hormone will be released into our central nervous systems that will spread a feeling against which we have no defence - happiness!
Contents
- Introduction – 1
- Selfless Mother Love – 5
- Instinct - A Second-Rate Emotion? – 13
- Loving People – 19
- Anybody Home? – 29
- Pig Smarts – 39
- Gratitude – 45
- Lies and Deception –51
- Stop, Thief! – 57
- Take Courage! – 65
- Black and White – 71
- Cold Hedgehogs, Warm Honey Bees – 77
- Crowd Intelligence – 87
- Hidden Agendas – 93
- Simple Sums – 97
- Just for Fun – 101
- Empathy – 138
- Altruism – 139
- Upbringing – 143
- Getting Rid of the Kids – 147
- Once Wild, Forever Wild – 151
- Snipe Mess – 161
- Something Special in the Air – 165
- Comfort – 171
- Weathering the Storm – 177
- Pain – 183
- Fear – 187
- High Society – 205
- Good and Evil – 207
- Hey, Mr Sandman – 215
- Animal Oracles – 221
- Animals Age, Too – 229
- Alien Worlds – 235
- Artificial Environments – 243
- In the Service of Humanity – 249
- Communication – 253
- Where Is the Soul? – 259
- Epilogue – 263
- Acknowledgements – 269
- Notes – 271
In-Page Footnotes ("Wohlleben (Peter) - The Inner Life of Animals: Surprising Observations of a Hidden World")
Footnote 2:
- Annotations of this are under way.
Footnote 3:
- I agree there was no abrupt break, but it was a break nonetheless, and a cumulative one.
- While the other animals feel, problem-solve and do all sorts of wonderful things, they are still stuck in their niche. They are not – even were we to vacate the scene – in a position to transform the planet (for good or ill) in the way human beings have.
Footnote 4:
- I don’t doubt that some animals can think – if by that is means solving problems.
- But, again, not on the scale we can. We – or at least some of us – can think in ways that don’t solve an immediate goal.
- Also, our verbal and written culture allows the accumulation and transmission of thought on an incomparable scale.
Footnote 5:
- This is far too strong a claim.
- I agree that it is absurd – not to say cruel – to deny that animals that obviously show emotions are mere unconscious automata.
- But it’s all too easy to slide from this into supposing ‘lower’ animals – that live such short lives and are killed in such numbers – have anything to gain from all the supposed suffering.
- Take fruit flies, for instance. They have – it seems – fairly complex brains, but are scoffed by the myriad along with the fruit.
- I’d like to connect this to my undergraduate Finals essay "Todman (Theo) - Mill on the Higher Pleasures". Lectures and essays referred to the life of shellfish (oysters?) as being like dozing in a warm bath, but the essay focuses on swine.
Footnote 6:
- He’s not being serious. I hope.
Footnote 7:
- Not so long ago surgeons used to operate on newborn humans without anaesthetic and the grounds that their cognitive functions hadn’t developed sufficiently (“the non-myelinisation of much of a baby's nervous system”), and that anaesthetic is – in any case – dangerous to administer in case you get the dose wrong. See Wikipedia: Pain in babies. I cite this to suggest that some deplorable human actions can be put down to incorrect understanding rather than to selfishness.
→ I had evidently cited this Wikipedia article before – where?
- Also, corner-cutting isn’t driven by the farmers but by the consumers, who want cheap food.
Footnote 8:
Book Comment
Bodley Head; 1st edition (19 Oct. 2017). Hardback.
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2026
- Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)