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What It's Like to Be a Dog

And Other Adventures in Animal Neuroscience

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What It's Like to Be a Dog

By: Gregory Berns
Narrated by: Joe Hempel
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What is it like to be a dog? A bat? Or a dolphin? To find out, neuroscientist Gregory Berns and his team began with a radical step: they taught dogs to go into an MRI scanner - completely awake. They discovered what makes dogs individuals with varying capacities for self-control, different value systems, and a complex understanding of human speech. And dogs were just the beginning.

In What It's Like to Be a Dog, Berns explores the fascinating inner lives of wild animals from dolphins and sea lions to the extinct Tasmanian tiger. Much as Silent Spring transformed how we thought about the environment, so What It's Like to Be a Dog will fundamentally reshape how we think about - and treat - animals. Groundbreaking and deeply humane, it is essential listening for animal lovers of all stripes.

©2017 Gregory Berns (P)2017 Tantor Animals Biological Sciences Outdoors & Nature Science Human Brain
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Critic Reviews

"An impressive overview of modern neurology and the still-unanswered issues raised by our treatment of our fellow living creatures." ( Kirkus)
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Fascinating but mostly about the process of identifying how dogs and other animals think and how it differs from or related to how humans do. It's not a collection of cute dog stories so if you're looking for something along those lines it might not be what you want. If not you might discover as I did that brain scanning processes are much more interesting than I had thought!

Fascinating look into the science of animal brains

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Neuroscience surely must make us kinder? I really enjoyed this information and the way the story was told. Thanks.

Gorgeous Information

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This was an incredibly interesting book, it kept me captured the entire 7 hours. I am a huge fan of dogs, but I found the description of other animals (seal lions, dolphins, Tasmanian tigers, bats) just as interesting. I have a medical background, and so found it a little easier to follow the detailed descriptions of brain anatomy often referred to in this book. The last chapter can be confronting for some (evident by another review of this book), but it is a discussion that has to take place, and if we are not ready to come face to face with the reality of life for most animals under human control, then we are simply choosing ignorance over enlightenment.

Outstanding insight into neuroscience!

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This book’s title I felt was misleading plus the last chapter horrified me. If this had been the first chapter, I would definitely never have listened to it.

Misleading

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