The author makes no real attempt to objectively analyse animals' emotional states or capabilities and doesn't need to: he states in the foreword that that animals can experience emotion is "obvious", and that he is a vegetarian on the basis that he could never eat anything with eyes, since the eyes are too reproachful.

So I should clarify: had the book been represented as a collection of animal stories in the mould of Gerald Durrell, this would be a five star read: a cracking holiday book by a real animal lover that'll keep you laughing, crying and turning the pages. As a scientific analysis, even as pop science (and with apologies to the author), this is laughable: lacking basic evidence for its arguments, and scrupulously avoiding objectivity by taking a biased point of view and stating its conclusions in the foreword.

Fun, but disappointingly shallow.