He emphasizes that these are challenges for the science, not challenges to the science.

Dacey argues that taking the challenges head-on can help build an even stronger, more vibrant science.

He discusses social reasoning in chimpanzees, foraging in honeybees, onsciousness in octopuses, and more.

Looking carefully at the challenges can help build a more personal understanding of the animals themselves.

There is wide-ranging and ever growing interest in the nature of animal minds, often cashed out as the cognitive and emotional lives of nonhumans. Queries center on a number of different issues including methods of study, why different studies offer different interpretations and explanations of available data and common sense, how do studies of captive animals jibe with those of free-ranging relatives (ecological validity), comparisons with humans, and is it possible to develop a unifying theory or different theories that tie together what we know.1

Studying animal minds and learning what's in them and how they work can range from being fairly easy to being incredibly difficult and for this other reasons I was pleased to learn of a recent book titled Seven Challenges for the Science of Animal Minds by Dr. Mike Dacey.2 Here's what he had to say about his detailed scrutiny centering on the study of nonhuman minds.

Marc Bekoff: Why did you write Seven Challenges for the Science of Animal Minds?

Mike Dacey: I’ve long been fascinated by animals, by science and how it works, and by the mind. Writing about how science approaches animal minds has allowed me to immerse myself in all three at once. As I’ve worked on these topics over the years, I noticed that there were some problems that kept coming up, no matter which species was being considered or what about them was being studied. These are the seven ‘challenges’ of the book: the scientific study of animal minds is difficult, and these are the most significant reasons why. I wanted to pull them together into one book, so they could be discussed together, and larger themes could emerge.

I wanted to write something that takes these challenges seriously while still giving reason for optimism. As I say in the introduction: these are challenges for the science of animal minds, not challenges to the science of animal minds.

MB: How does your book........

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