Tim's Reviews > Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior

I had serious problems with the way this book is written. Though Grandin's plainspoken writing style is refreshing, I often felt like she was oversimplifying very complex ideas in order to appeal to a scientifically illiterate audience (or worse, to make her arguments more convincing). Statements such as "Autism is a kind of way station on the road from animals to humans" aren't just over-dramatic (and ultimately nonsensical), they're also potentially offensive. Much of the book is purely speculative, and I'm left wondering whether it's really appropriate to write a popular science book that's mostly about completely untested hypotheses (this seems to be a growing trend in popular science literature, but that's another discussion entirely).

At the very least, Grandin could have been clearer in differentiating between 1) widely accepted scientific consensus, 2) well regarded schools of thought, 3) contested minority theories, 4) solitary experiments that have not been reproduced, 5) purely anecdotal evidence from her own life or that of friends, and 6) her own untested hypotheses. As is, they all sort of blur together, and a reader not entirely familiar with how science works might be led to buy into Grandin's arguments with less skepticism than is warranted. It certainly didn't help that many of the studies and "facts" she mentioned weren't even cited. Those that were were often cited as news publications ABOUT scientific studies rather than directly citing the studies themselves. It's important to remember that much of what is written about in the book is outside of Grandin's own area of professional expertise, and though I think it's perfectly fine to write about a topic you don't have a degree in, it was things like that that made me wonder whether Grandin herself could stand to be a little more skeptical, methodical, and cautious. To put it simply, I trusted her when she was talking about farm animals and dogs, less so when she was talking about neuroscience and other kinds of animals, and not at all when she tried giving insight into stuff like politics or child rearing.

One constant point of annoyance: For someone with a PhD in Animal Science, I was astounded that Grandin seemed to have no idea whatsoever of what the word "animal" even means. The book was littered with phrases like, "Animals feel pain. So do birds, and we now have pretty good evidence that fish feel pain too" or "I know dung beetles are insects, not animals, but..." Since distinguishing between the six taxonomical kingdoms is one of those things you learn in 9th grade bio class, I can only assume that Grandin is dumbing down for her audience. This has the duel effect of insulting the intelligence of those readers who have a basic grasp of Bio 101, and spreading misinformation and confusion among those who don't.

The confusion over the category of "animal" extends to talking about humans as well: "People were animals too, once," she writes. And what - we're not any more? Throughout the book, Grandin condemns overgeneralizing (a vice she associates with "normal people") and champions a pragmatic focus on specific details (a skill she associates with autistic people and animals) as the best way to handle any situation. Yet Grandin is guilty of many massive over-generalizations (the aforementioned "waystation" idea being one example, her failure to treat autism as a spectrum being another). And among the most frustrating of these for me was Grandin's view of humanity's relationship to the rest of the animal world, which is vague, romantic, and naive. Statements like "dogs and people belong together" or "people and animals are supposed to be together" amount to nothing more than mushy utopianism. What exactly would such a thing even mean? Together how? Grandin never elaborates.

Her idea of "nature" is pretty unscientific as well. At one point she asks, "Is animal infanticide really what nature intended? Or is it, at least some of the time, an aberration of what nature intended?" That question doesn't even begin to make logical sense. What kind of mystical nature is Grandin talking about that has things like intention? Nature doesn't intend. There are no aberrations in nature. These are human concepts. Nature just is. Even if she takes the classic anthropocentric view of defining nature as "everything in the world except humans and things made by humans," the question still doesn't make any sense. Animals have been killing their young long before humans even existed. What Grandin really means to say is that animal infanticide seems to serve no evolutionary purpose. This may be debatable. But either way, plenty of animal (and especially human) behaviors serve no apparent evolutionary purpose. "Evolutionarily advantageous" is not the same as "natural" and neither of those is the same as "right," "good," "moral" or what have you.

All that having been said, Grandin's many anecdotes are entertaining and there's a lot of cool ideas to chew on throughout. If you're an avid reader of pop neuroscience or animal studies books, you might already have encountered a good deal of this stuff, but the parallels Grandin draws are interesting (even if I'm skeptical of some of them) and her emphasis on "getting inside the black box" of the animal mind is an important one. Overall, I enjoyed reading this book, even if I was often frustrated with it.