How Smart Is My Cat?
We talk with Virginia Morell. NY Times best selling author of Animal Wise, a book that explores animal intelligence. Learn how amazing animals really are and find out about new studies that suggest that cats have emotional attachment to their humans (we already knew that, right?) We talk about animals from ants and bees to elephants and parrots. You will learn things you did not know. You will be astounded and humbled by what Virginia shares!
BIO:
Virginia Morell is a science journalist and author. A contributing correspondent for Science since 1990, she covers evolutionary and conservation biology, and animal behavior. Her reporting keeps her in close communications with leading scientists in these fields. Morell is also a contributor to National Geographic, and has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate, Discover, Audubon, National Wildlife, Outside and other publications.
In addition to her journalistic work, Morell is the author of four celebrated books. Her most recent, Animal Wise: How We Know Animals Think and Feel (Crown 2015), is a New York Times Bestseller, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist, and a Kirkus Reviews “Best Book of the Year.” The New York Times awarded a Notable Book of the Year to Ancestral Passions, her dramatic biography of the famed Leakey family and their notable findings. Blue Nile, about her journey down the Blue Nile to Sudan, was a San Francisco Chronicle Best Travel Book. And The Washington Post listed Wildlife Wars, which she co-authored with Richard Leakey, as one of their Best Books of the Year.
In 2004, her National Geographic article on climate change was a finalist for Best Environmental Article from the Society of Environmental Journalists. Elizabeth Kolbert selected her 2008 National Geographic article “Inside Animal Minds” for the Best American Science and Nature Writing 2009 (Houghton Mifflin) collection.
An accomplished public speaker, Morell spent March 2009 as a principal lecturer for National Geographic Society’s Expeditions Program on one of its round-the-world trips. She lives in Ashland, Oregon with her husband, writer Michael McRae, and their unemployed American Working Farm Collie, Buckaroo, and his cat pal, Scout Kitten Carson.
