What Sheep Think About the Weather

Author: Amelia Thomas / Publisher: Sourcebooks / Pages: 368

A wealth of scientific articles, how-to books, and online videos instruct and inform humans on how to tell animals what we want them to do: sit, stay, don’t eat the flowers in my garden, etc. However, in typical anthropocentric fashion, decidedly less attention has been devoted to understanding the messages animals are sending us.

Author, naturalist, and journalist Amelia Thomas begins What Sheep Think About the Weather: How to Listen to What Animals Are Trying to Say with the deceptively simple question of “how, why, and what it means to listen” to animals. The book, a chronicle of her year-long search for an answer, weaves personal narrative—populated with stories of her small farm’s pigs, dogs, horses, and resident wildlife—with expert interviews and insights from a veritable who’s who of animal scientists, trainers, trackers, and even telepaths.

What Thomas discovers along the way is illuminating, sometimes heartbreaking, and always thought-provoking. She delves into the myriad welfare concerns that stem from humans’ consistent, almost determined failure to understand the animals with which we share our world. In some areas, opportunities for further exploration are overlooked: The billions of unheard and unseen animals on factory farms receive only passing mentions, as do most animals used in research—though Thomas does devote a truly moving chapter to the ape sign language experiments popular in the 1960s and ’70s.

Ultimately, What Sheep Think About the Weather is an overdue, thoroughly researched, and deeply compelling exploration of what it means to listen to animals—from earwigs to elephants. The book will inspire and resonate with anyone who has ever looked

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