If you love animals, or you are curious about the cognitive, intuitive and sentient aspects of animals, fish and birds, this is a book you will want to read, probably more than once. 'The Inner Life of Animals' by Peter Wohlleben is beautifully written with observations and information that will, in equal measures, delight, concern and fascinate you. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that, having read this book, you will never think of animals in the same way again.

Peter starts out with the premise that, as scientists have long maintained, animals (and birds and fish, etc) are capable of enjoying a full range of emotions. Every chapter provides explanations with scientific findings made easy to understand, and stories so well told with a gentle humour that it is impossible not to be enchanted and keen to know more.

Topics discussed in short chapters are mother love, instinct, loving people, consciousness, intelligence, gratitude, deception, courage, design, seasonal cycles, crowd control, play, desire, death, grief, shame, regret, altruism, parenthood, comfort, survival, pain, fear, family, ageing, environments, communication, soul and service to humanity.

Just looking at that list of topics which apply to most animals and their lives, makes you realise just how similar they are to us humans. After all, we are each made by nature, dependent upon nature, and an integral part of nature, in exactly the same way.

There are too many favourite revelations to mention which I am sure will be the case for anyone who reads this wonderful book, here are a few that spring to mind.

A mother squirrel places a higher value on the lives of her offspring than she does her own.

In places where animals are not hunted such as the Galapagos Islands or out on the tundra far north, animals trust humans and allow visitors to get very close to them. These encounters make people really happy when they can meet and interact with wild animals on a mutually voluntary basis.

Ravens and wolves who form lifelong partnerships working together to find and share food. They are both highly intelligent, intuitive and sentient creating lifelong bonds with their partners, with each other, and with their parents, children and friends. I wrote about this in my review for 'Wisdom with Wolves' - a book that Peter mentions where he says Elli Radinger explained to him: 'Ravens enjoy living with wolf packs, and the wolf cubs even engage with the black birds in play.'

A colony of bees that brings water into the hive to cool it down whereby thousands of fast beating bees wings circulate a cool breeze between the honey combs.

On the distressing side of things, when you find out that animals feel pain and empathy, feel frightened, love with passion and protect their own, it's hard to justify ever treating animals (birds, fish, etc) so badly. This book provides the evidence, and hopefully, the impetus to do something about it - and stop the cruelty that goes on in this world. Here are two key examples:

Fish have more than twenty pain receptors around their mouth, meaning that fishing injuries cause them to suffer.

Mice demonstrate empathy in the sight of suffering companions and in adverse laboratory conditions are known to communicate their suffering to each other to provide each other with some comfort.

As Peter rightly says: 'It is not a pleasant thought that the majority of animals living around us are traumatised.'

So let's be compassionate human-animals as we were made to be, and let's work towards evolving a world where cruelty of any kind doesn't have to be. A world where all humans, living things and sentient beings are treated as friends growing and flourishing together, rather than foe.

This can only be good for all of us which makes 'The Hidden Life of Animals' an essential book to read and absorb and share far and wide.

Sue Cartwright

Spiral Leaf

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The Inner Life of Animals by Peter Wohlleben