Book Review: What Sheep Think about the Weather - Amelia Thomas

It started with a hummingbird dive-bombing Amelia Thomas over her morning coffee, and a pair of piglets who just wouldn’t stay put. Soon Amelia, journalist and new farmer, begins to question the communications of the creatures all around her: her pigs, her dogs, the pheasant family inhabiting her wood, her ‘difficult’ big red horse: even the earwigs in the farm’s dark, damp corners. Are they all just animals reacting instinctually to the world around them—or are they trying to communicate something deeper?

This is a curious - and mostly satisfying - look at the practicalities of interspecies communication. Unlike How to Speak Whale, this doesn't assume that animals have a rich and complex grammar, nor does it make the case for animals having "higher-order" cognition. Instead, this is a fairly practical look at the limits of understanding animals.

Anyone with a pet cat or dog knows that they are experts at some forms of communication. "Feed me" being the primary one!

In some ways, animals are simpler than humans. Hamsters don’t deliberately confound or obfuscate. Donkeys don’t gossip. An iguana will not gaslight you. Animals say what they mean. Yet that’s not to say this content is clear, or that we’re always aware it even exists at all.

The author is open about her limitations and her goals. At times, it rather feels like reading a series of blog posts as she finds a new paper, chats to a new expert, and accidentally acquires yet another animal. Because she's primarily working with her own animals, there's a fair bit of anthropomorphising going on. Similarly, any "do your own research" project is going to be unaware of how to critically assess evidence. That makes it slightly scattershot and homespun. Nevertheless - it is fascinating what she uncovers.

There are some excellent practical tips for understanding the animal experience (I particularly like the idea of going on all fours and trying to understand a pet's-eye-view of the world). There's also an interesting bunch of interviews with scientists who are seeking to understand how and why animals communicate - and whether we can meaningfully exchange ideas with them, or just condition their behaviour.

But, as the book wears on, the author becomes more and more credulous. She goes on a series of courses which - with the best will in the world - seem to have rather dubious outcomes.

Most of what I hear and see over these seven soaking days I need no scientific study to verify. I just sort of know it, the way the chicken guessers and dog listeners in the experiments just sort of knew what the calls signified. I wonder if this has to do with something called the motivational structure hypothesis,

With no external interrogation of what she is doing, the book descends into the pseudo-scientific. The author recounts receiving mystic visions, engages with people who believe they can communicate with animals using telepathy, wanders into the realm of quantum physics, and claims that their horse has a psychic bond with her which causes psychosomatic injuries. Oh, and that her raspberry plants are laughing at her.

It is unfortunate that the last few chapters undermine all the interesting and useful information in the rest of the book.