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.