Please define all vocabulary in the context of the book.
Chapter 1
- What is an “autistic savant” (7)? How are animals like autistic savants?
- How do behaviorists view animals?
- Explain the difference between punishment and negative reinforcement.
- Explain Grandin’s assertion that “autistic people think in pictures” (10) using your own words.
- How do ethologists view animals?
- What, according to Grandin, is the basic flaw that behaviorism and ethology share?
- How has Grandin’s ability to think visually helped her to better understand animals?
- What is Grandin’s larger “hope” for her book (26)?
savant (7)
behaviorism (9)
ethology (11)
anthropomorphize (14)
Chapter 2
- What, according to Grandin, is the biggest problem with animal welfare regulation today?
- How do “normal people” see the world? How do animals (and autistic people) see the world?
- Explain how visual acuity, panoramic vision, and contrast differentiate animal and human vision.
- Why would a cow “voluntarily explore a yellow raincoat hanging on a fence but dig in his heels if you try to force him to walk past one” (47)? Do people have a similar fear of and curiosity toward new things and experiences?
- Why are “intermittent sounds” so distracting to people and animals (49)?
- Grandin claims that “normal human beings are blind to anything they’re not paying attention to” (51). Can you think of an experience you’ve had that confirms this claim?
- Explain “three-brain theory” (54).
- How is having a larger frontal lobe both an advantage and a disadvantage for non-autistic humans?
- Why do autistic people and animals notice details that ordinary people don’t?
ideology (28)
intermittent (36)
balk (37)
acuity (40)
novelty (45)
sonar (61)
Chapter 3
- What is selection pressure? Why is selective breeding (breeding animals for a particular physical trait) dangerous?
- Why are non-autistic people able to experience “mixed emotions” while animals and autistic people are not?
- What is a “primary emotion” (90)? How is it different from a secondary emotion?
- What are the four core emotions? What are the four primary social emotions?
- Why do humans enjoy “any kind of hunt” (96)? Why do “children always want new toys no matter how many toys they have already” (97)?
- Explain the effects of oxytocin, vasopressin and endorphins on the brain.
- Why is social touching (hugging, hand-holding, etc.) important? Why are the positive effects of social touching minimized in autistic people?
- Discuss some of the potential benefits of play (both “locomotor” and roughhousing) in young people and animals.
- Why is friendship so important for people and animals?
succeeding (77)
albino (78)
cull (81)
notorious (84)
correlation (99)
Discussion questions for chapters 5 - 7 are taken from the publisher's website.
Chapter 4
- What is the main difference between predatory aggression and emotional aggression (rage)?
- Why is it “fun to kill a groundhog” (138)?
- How do animals manage or suppress predatory aggression? (In other words, why won’t a predator like a lion kill every zebra in its territory?)
- What is animal violence? How is it different from animal aggression?
- How do dogs, elephants and pigs learn to manage their aggression?
- Why is it important to allow animals to socialize with other animals of their species? with people?
- Given that dogs are essentially “predators wired to kill” (131), how is it possible that we have made them our docile, loyal pets?
innate (134)
erratic (141)
inhibit (142)
aberration (151)
aversive (166)
solicit (170)
Discussion questions for chapters 5 - 7 are taken from the publisher's website.
Chapter 5
- Why do animals often hide their pain?
- When it comes to animals feeling (and dealing with) pain, Grandin notes: “Prey animals can be incredibly uncomplaining” but that “predator animals can be big babies.” This seems to be the opposite of what we might expect; why is this the case? Also, why is it that vets tend to worry about animals experiencing “too little pain instead of too much”?
- Do fish feel pain? Paraphrase both the affirmative and negative answers Grandin gives for this query.
- How is the duality of pain and suffering (in all animals and people) related to the brain’s frontal lobe? Are pain and suffering one and the same? If not, why not—and when and how are they not? Explain. Why does Grandin say animals “probably aren’t as upset about pain as a human being would be in the same situation”? Finally, how does Grandin’s thinking on this subject pertain to people with autism?
- “Fear is so bad for animals I think it’s worse than pain.” What is the author’s reasoning for this claim— and how does her reasoning stem from the fact that fear and pain are (in terms of the brain) opposites?
- Clarify the difference between fear and anxiety, pointing out which parts of the brain deal with each emotion. Also explain how these phenomena correspond with the fight-or-flight impulse and orienting response emotion in animals. Why is vigilance linked with the orienting response? And how did the author’s experience with taking antidepressants influence her thinking on these matters?
- Why does Grandin suggest that the “feral children” of centuries past could have actually been children with autism?
- “When it comes to managing their fear,” writes Grandin, “animals and autistic people are at a big disadvantage because they have to rely on pictures.” Illuminate the point she is making here. How is the brain’s frontal lobe involved?
- What is the purpose of fear? Summarize the study of the fearful guppies in explaining this purpose.
- The author asserts that “people and animals use their emotions to predict the future.” How do emotions make such predictions happen—and what ultimate purpose(s) might these predictions serve? Provide a few examples, if you can, and in doing so address what Grandin calls the “basic principle [of] close-up = fear [and] distant = calm.”
- “Most researchers have concluded that fear of snakes is semi-innate,” Grandin notes. Define “semi-innate.”
- What are evolutionary fears, and how do they reflect Grandin’s assertion that “evolution [sometimes gives] animals and people an ability to ward off trouble before it happens?”
- Define “extinction” as used by behaviorists, and explain how the term differs from forgetting.
- What are slow fears and fast fears, and how do they each relate to the amygdala? Also, explain the difference between learned facts and learned fears—which sort of learning lasts longer and goes deeper, and why?
- Why does Grandin employ the term “hyper-specific”—a word that comes from the study of autism—to denote animal fears?
- “The more fearful the animal, the more likely he is to investigate.” Explain this apparent paradox.
- Give a few examples of overgeneralized fears that an animal or person might experience. Why do a person’s fears in this case tend to be conceptual, while an animal’s tend to be physical?
- Toward the end of this chapter, Grandin gives a detailed account of how “animals can be inoculated against fears by other animals.” How does she use Seabiscuit, the famous racehorse, to make this point?
CHAPTER 6: HOW ANIMALS THINK
1. What is “true cognition” (according to the Oxford researcher Marion Stamp Dawkins)? Do animals exhibit this trait? If so, which animals and how?
2. Explain why Dr. Irene Pepperberg found phenomenal success in her experiments with Alex (her amazingly smart parrot) by switching from operant conditioning to social modeling theory.
3. Who is Ildefonso? What is his background and why do we know about him to begin with? Sum up what Grandin thinks we might be able to learn about animals and cognition from Ildefonso—and from other language-less people. At one point Grandin supposes: “Do some animals have religious feelings and perceptions? Do animals believe in magic? I don’t think anyone can rule it out.” Is Grandin reaching too far here, in your view? Explain why you do or don’t think so.
4. Must there always be language in a creature in order for consciousness to also exist in that creature? Explain how the author’s negative take on this query stems from her own autism. Also, describe how the “dreaming mice” experiment at MIT at least suggests that animals (even if they lack language per se) are conscious beings.
5. Review Grandin’s five-point checklist for inspectors aiming to make sure that animals receive humane treatment at meatpacking plants. Explain how this checklist both critiques and corrects “language-based thinkers” such as “people in academia and often in government” while also covering all conceivable details great and small. Also, given the fastidiousness and proven success of this checklist, describe how Grandin brings a unique—and uniquely animal-savvy—perspective to such endeavors.
6. Did the prairie dogs outside Flagstaff, Arizona, really create a language? And do they now “speak” and “understand” it? Review the author’s detailed account of these animals when formulating your answers.
7. “Animals are the originators of music and the true instructors.” Why does Grandin make this claim? What’s her logic? Further, how can she confidently assert that birdsong is “a good candidate for being a true animal language”?
8. Returning to Dr. Pepperberg and Alex, how did this incredible parrot come to actually spell the word “nut”? And why, in spite of this remarkable breakthrough, does Dr. Pepperberg refrain from claiming that Alex has language?
CHAPTER 7: ANIMAL GENIUS: EXTREME TALENTS
1. Near the outset of this chapter, Grandin says that “most animals have ‘superhuman’ skills [in that] animals have animal genius.” Give examples of such genius, from chapter 7 and from throughout Animals in Translation.
2. Who was Clever Hans? Explain why the author is so impressed with Hans even though his famed “counting” ability was finally disproved.
3. Account for why Grandin flatly rejects the “if-animals-were-smart-they-wouldn’t-still-be-pooping-in-the-woods theory of animal cognition.” What does this theory maintain? In describing Grandin’s rejection, explain why any given culture—and the knowledge existing within that culture—must evolve.
4. What is the “hidden figures talent”—and why do autistic people seem to be so good at it? Describe a few of the practical, immediate employment opportunities Grandin sees for autistic people in relation to this talent. Moreover, flesh out what the author means by the following declaration: “Normal people don’t draw a dog, they draw a concept of a dog. Autistic people draw the dog.”
5. Revisit the “ant navigation” story that Grandin relates, which concerns how ants in an obstacle course will invariably, on passing a gray pebble while going one way, “look for that same gray pebble [when] coming back” the other way. Why does Grandin add: “I do the same thing ants do”? What point is she making here about the way in which animals and people with autism see the world?
6. If we are to believe one key study, as Grandin notes: “Wolves and people were together at the point when homo sapiens had just barely evolved from homo erectus . . . they were on a lot more equal footing than dogs and people are today.” What did humans “learn” from evolving alongside wolves? What did we get from them in terms of thought and behavior, action and skill, strength and talent?
7. Revisit the last two sentences of this chapter: “People were animals, too, once, and when we turned into human beings we gave something up. Being close to animals brings some of it back.” What’s the “it” that Grandin is referring to here?
