Jeffrey Kluger Quotes

The difference between an author and a horse is that the horse doesn't understand the horse dealer's language.

It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.

Every literary culture has among its first bearings the 'blether' of animals who seek to make sense of human existence.

If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.

Perhaps measuring animal intelligence by comparing it to human intelligence isn't the best litmus test.

When we see animals doing remarkable things, how do we know if we're simply seeing tricks or signs of real intelligence? Are talented animals just obeying commands, or do they have some kind of deeper understanding? One of the biggest challenges for animal researchers is to come up with tests that can distinguish between the two.

Animals are certainly more sophisticated than we used to think. And we shouldn't lump together animals as a group. Crows and chimps and dogs are all highly intelligent in very different ways.

It's very likely that most mammals have consciousness, and probably birds, too.

Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.

The proposition that humans have mental characteristics wholly absent in non-humans is inconsistent with the theory of evolution.

Closeness to animals creates the desire to understand them, and not just a little piece of them, but the whole animal. It makes us wonder what goes on in their heads even though we fully realize that the answer can only be approximated.

I have come to know Bugs so well that I no longer have to think about what he is doing in any situation.

The dog is almost human in its demand for living interest, yet fatally less than human in its inability to foresee.

When the dog looks at you, the dog is not thinking what kind of a person you are. The dog is not judging you.

One would wonder to hear skeptical men disputing for the reason of animals, and telling us it is only our pride and prejudices that will not allow them the use of that faculty. Reason shows itself in all occurrences of life; whereas the brute makes no discovery of such a talent, but in what immediately regards his own preservation, or the continuance of his species. Animals in their generation are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass. Take a brute out of his instinct, and you find him wholly deprived of understanding.

A consciousness of history is one of the key factors that distinguishes us from other animals.

Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.

Birds and animals probably think without knowing that they think; that is, they have not self-consciousness. Only man seems to be endowed with this faculty; he alone develops disinterested intelligence, intelligence that is not primarily concerned with his own safety and well-being but that looks abroad upon things.

When a herd of cattle see a strange object, they are not satisfied till each one has sniffed it; and the horse is cured of his fright at the robe, or the meal-bag, or other object, as soon as he can be induced to smell it. There is a great deal of speculation in the eye of an animal, but very little science.

We think of computers as smart and powerful machines. But your goldfish is smarter.

My scope on what's good is if I like it. The first person I have to please is myself.

Horses do sense things way before people.

For me, there is a real line between something being the worst thing in the world and the best thing in the world.

The belief that 'animals' are superior or inferior to humans because they live in an eternal now is untrue, because no being lives in a now.

Sheep are never going to talk to you about cricket.