Join us for a conversation with Virginia Morell, author of Animal Wise: How We Know Animals Think and Feel, the New York Times bestseller that explores animal intelligence and will alter the way we as humans view other species.

Why do rats laugh and elephants grieve? How do we know ants teach, and parrots name their chicks? Why do we—and parrots and dolphins—have names? Or, for that matter, personalities? Why are we and other animals self-aware? By taking an evolutionary perspective to these questions, scientists are coming up with some surprising answers. Virginia Morell will discuss a  revolutionary shift in how scientists regard animals. Researchers no longer ask, “Do animals think?” Instead, they want to know, “How and what do animals think?”  Their discoveries have far-reaching implications for our relationships with other animals and how we treat them.

Virginia Morell is the author of four books, and a contributing correspondent for Science and National Geographic. Her latest book, Animal Wise: How We Know Animals Think and Feel, is a New York Times bestseller, and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She’s written more than 40 stories for National Geographic and also writes for the online news site. Her love of the natural world and her reporting keep her in close contact with leading scientists in ethology, biology, and conservation. She lives in Ashland, Oregon with her husband, writer Michael McRae, their collies, Annie and Cisco, and their cat-pal, Scout.  “I like to keep in mind the words of John Muir when I’m writing about animals: ‘Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much larger and better in every way.’”

The conversation will be moderated by Colin Norman, the former News Editor at Science, and Fred Dylla, Executive Director Emeritus of the American Institute of Physics and author of Scientific Journeys. This event is part of the series Science and Society - Making Sense of the World Around Us, launched by the Lewes Public Library last year and co-organized by Fred Dylla and Linda Dylla.

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