When Eugene Linden was writing The Parrot's Lament--a book subtitled "And Other True Tales of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence, and Ingenuity"--he enjoyed joking around with his 2-year-old daughter Sofia. "Are you a rutabaga?" "I'm not a rutabaga!" she would giggle. "Are you a waterbug?" "I'm not a waterbug!" Soon, Sofia learned to riff off her father's teasing: "I'm not a rutabaga; Daddy is a rutabaga!" or the truly insightful, "I'm not a rutabaga; the baby is a rutabaga. I'm a waterbug!"
A book about "stories--not studies--of animal intelligence" would at first glance appear to be just another touchy-feely collection of warm and fuzzy tales about animals saving people from fires or other similar heartwarming accounts. However, on second glance, Linden (a journalist who has written extensively on the subject of animal intelligence) has produced something more useful to the lay reader--stories that reveal evidence of the consciousness of their animal subjects, set into the context of what is scientifically known about animal cognition. Dividing the book into thematic sections covering such "human" attributes as game-playing, trade and barter, deception, or empathy and heroism, the author draws heavily on the anecdotes of zookeepers, animal trainers, and others working with exotic animals. The cumulative impact of these accounts, when interwoven with the author's distillation of the relevant ethological theories, creates a compelling argument in favor of consciousness in animals.