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What makes humans different from animals? Psy-Q author Ben Ambridge's illuminating new book has a surprising answer: really, we're all just animals. But all animals – us included – are pretty special.
Are You Smarter Than a Chimpanzee? is a collection of tests, puzzles, quizzes and games that pits the reader against a range of creatures to show that, from dolphins that understand grammar to parrots that can add, fetishist quails and ant-swarms outsmarting the world's best mathematicians, the animal kingdom is a match for anything mankind has to offer.
Along the way, Ambridge debunks common myths about animals and reveals the bizarre and wonderful science at the extreme end of zoology, where animal psychologists design personality tests for donkeys and logic problems for pigeons. Based on real, cutting-edge science. Are You Smarter Than a Chimpanzee? makes us laugh, think and question our assumption about our place in the animal kingdom.
Ben Ambridge is Reader in Psychology at the University of Liverpool and the ESRC International Centre for Language and Communicative Development (LuCiD). He is a recipient of the Guardian-Wellcome Science Writing Prize and his first book Psy-Q: A Mind-Bending Miscellany of Everyday Psychology was a Sunday Times Book of the Year and has been translated into a dozen languages. Ben writes on psychology for the Guardian and the Big Issue, and his TEDtalk on The Top 10 Myths of Psychology has been viewed over 2 million times. He lives in Sale, Greater Manchester.
"Ambridge has a trickster's charm of "How did he do that?" presentation and a stage magician's "Hey presto!" delight in revelation"
– The Times
"Clever, broad-minded and fun"
– Sunday Times
