For as long as I can remember, people who made a living studying animals "scientifically" have warned the rest of us that we must never attribute human charateristics to animals. They have even invented a buzz word for this trait, "ANTHROPOMORPHIC" to justify demonic behavior perpetrated on animals by scientists. If the scientist happens to be ENGLISH, then God help the animal. This book is full of stories of ENGLISHMEN who seemed to take a perverse pleasure in killing animals who were minding their own business...Elephants, wild cats, blind birds. Their favorite phrase, on an ad hoc basis, was to "put the animal out of it's misery". MISERY!?? WHAT MISERY?!! Just because it was blind or deaf? What about John Milton? Ray Charles? Beethoven? Should we put them out of their misery? God forbid anyone should be DIFFERENT! But I digress. These scientists have never explained WHY we mustn't attribute "human characteristics" to animals. What will happen? Will we lose our minds? Our jobs? Will Saturn leave it's orbit and crash into Jupiter? What exactly is wrong with perceiving the truth about animals? Throughout the book, some scientist is quoted as saying animals do not have higher intelligence, even though all the evidence shows that they do. The scientist follows his credo by blind faith, without ever examining the data right before his eyes. And although Burton sides with the animals, he is extremely defensive about it, fearing ridicule from the Science Priesthood...as if what a scientist thought had any validity when it came to understanding animals. This book was a strange balance. The stories of the animals themselves and their treatment by normal, everyday folks, who showed care and compassion towards them was juxtaposed by stories of their treatment BY SCIENTISTS (or worse, BY ENGLISHMEN!!!) whose concept of sport covers the murder of three elephants out of four, just because one of them was limping a little, to name one of the incidents. It transpires, in reference to a feral child found in France around the time of the French Revolution that human charateristics have nothing whatsoever to do with genetics. What are called "human characteristics" are clearly SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS, for virtually any species. If you don't want to wind up despising the ENGLISH, as well as SCIENTISTS, don't read this book.

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