Beyond Words

Carl Safina's intimate view of animal behaviour challenges the fixed boundary between humans and nonhuman animals. In Beyond Words, he presents numerous facts and decades of field observations about an array of fascinating animals: from the Amboseli National Park in Kenya where he witnesses struggling elephant families survive poaching and drought, to Yellowstone National Park to observe wolves in the aftermath of one pack's personal tragedy, before he dives into the peaceful society of killer whales living in the waters of the Pacific Northwest.
"Over my lifetime, living with, studying, and working with many other animals in their world and ours has only broadened and deepened - and reaffirmed - my impression of our shared life."
Beyond Words is a powerful and illuminating insight into the unique personalities of animals through stories of their emotional responses: joy, jealousy, anger, and love. The similarity between human and nonhuman consciousness, self-awareness, and empathy suggests that humans and non-humans all feel the same emotions, form bonds with our families and social groups, and learn to cope with our environment in similar ways. Wise, passionate, and revelatory Beyond Words examines humanity's place in nature and our kinship with the natural world.


Carl Safina advocates that animals think and feel much like people do - because, after all, people are animals. Animals have inner lives but how does that call into question what really makes us human, how can it change our relationship with the natural world?

Beyond Words is a landmark book that challenges the boundary between humans and nonhumans. Weaving together up-to-date scientific discoveries into consciousness with intimate observation of free-living animals, from herds of elephant in Kenya to a wolf pack in Yellowstone National Park and schools of killer whales in the Pacific, Carl Safina takes the reader into their lives and minds. In understanding that animals think, mourn, and have unique personalities (as well as having distinctive roles within their social structures) as well as the capacity for perception, self-awareness and emotional connection Carl Safina demonstrates how humans - with their friends, families, career plans - are similar to other animals that live in structured groups, from elephants and great apes to dolphins. Beyond Words re-evaluates our relationship to the other species around us. Animals are directly affected by human pressures, and in encountering (and listening) to the minds of other animals Carl Safina hears what animals need humans to know about our shared life.