The Nature of the Beast

By: David J. Anderson

Narrated by: L.J. Ganser

Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

Does your dog get sad when you leave for the day? Does your cat purr because she loves you? Do bears attack when they’re angry? You can’t very well ask them.

In fact, scientists haven’t been able to reach a consensus on whether animals even have emotions like humans do, let alone how to study them. Yet studies of animal emotion are critical for understanding human emotion and mental illness.

In The Nature of the Beast, pioneering neuroscientist David J. Anderson describes a new approach to solving this problem. He and his colleagues have figured out how to study the brain activity of animals as they navigate real-life scenarios, like fleeing a predator or competing for a mate. His research has revolutionized what we know about animal fear and aggression. Here, he explains what studying emotions and related internal brain states in animals can teach us about human behavior, offering new insights into why isolation makes us more aggressive, how sex and violence connect, and whether there’s a link between aggression and mental illness.

Full of fascinating stories, The Nature of the Beast reconceptualizes how the brain regulates emotions - and explains why we have them at all.

©2022 David J. Anderson (P)2022 Recorded Books

in-depth science for scientists

if what you're looking for is a Malcom Gladwell style collection of compelling stories that plausibly support a scientifically baseless conclusion, then this is not the book for you.

Instead this is an in-depth review of important research, as well as an understandable interpretation of what the conclusions imply.

Everything is stated and supported with rigorous attention to detail. This may be off-putting and seem repetitive to people who aren't approaching this with a scientific lens, and who aren't particularly concerned with how accurate or reliable the conclusions are.

If you believe every bit of nonfiction you read, then this book isn't for you. If you're trying to understand how emotions actually work, then it is.

Neuroscience at it’s best!

Anderson makes a compelling argument that the once so elusive emotions can be studied as internal states of the brain, and exist not only in humans, but also in other animals, some as evolutionary distant as fruit flies!

Deep in the Weeds

Not what I'd hoped. Definitely geared toward laboratory biology enthusiasts. Struggled to finish. Did so out of obligation.

Very repetitive

The book could have been half the length to communicate how it’s challenging with current technology and techniques to establish causality between emotion and neurons.