Simone Blackwell
April 8, 2015
PSYCH 3110
Dr. Johnson
Book Report Animals in translation: Using the mysteries of autism to decode animal behavior is a book written by Temple Grandin, which depicts her outtake on animal behavior as an autistic animal behaviorist. As an animal behavior expert, Grandin has studied various animals including dogs, cows, pigs, and horses to name a few. She used her condition to better understand animals, focusing on areas such as fear, emotions, and socializing in animals. Grandin also placed a huge emphasis on the similarities seen between animal and autistic individuals. I chose to read and write about this book as I was curious to learn more about how animals perceive the world as well as how their behavior may be closely related to that of humans. I was also interested to find out how having autism may have affected Grandin’s work, and/or the way in which she perceives the behavior of animals. In the book Grandin mentioned that she first became interested in studying animals during her college aged years, as she was highly influenced by psychologist B.F. Skinner and his studies on behaviorism. As a psychologist, Skinner taught that behavior was the only thing one needed to study. Thus, many animal behaviorists began to accept the idea that animals didn’t have emotions or intelligence, and that their behavior was solely influenced by their environment. During this time behaviorist were also influenced by the ideas of Skinner as they believed that basic concepts such as positive and negative reinforcement as well as punishment, explained everything they needed to know about animals. It was suggested by Skinner that the behavior seen in animals was merely a stimuli response and that animals were simply responding to their surroundings or environment. While Grandin along with many other behaviorists during this time, was influenced by Skinner, after having the chance sit down and talk with him she quickly changed her views on how she perceived animal behavior. Suffering from autism it was hard for Grandin to believe that behaviors seen in animals was a product of their environment, as she had faced many challenges due to her condition which did not come from her environment. Thus, Grandin set out on her own journey to discover the truth about animal behavior. One of the first concepts mentioned in the book by Grandin was animal’s fear of small details. Grandin explained that just as humans, animals are very detail oriented, though animals often see details in which most humans do not. Grandin first came to this idea, as after working with cows, she observed that they were not only afraid of shadows but they were afraid to enter dark spaces as well. She went on to recount her time working with different meat packing plants as an animal welfare auditor and the details in which she noticed that seemed to affect the animals seen in these plants (i.e. cows, pigs). While working with meatpacking plants that distributed beef/cattle, Grandin noticed that there were a number of issues that could possibly be affecting the behavior displayed by the cows in such plants. Grandin pointed out that often times certain areas of the plant were too dark. She also made note of the bright reflections made off of the metal used in the plants as both of these details seemed to scare the cows. As an animal welfare auditor, Grandin also had the chance to work with hog plants. It was in a hog plant where Grandin noticed that pigs did not react very well to seeing people moving around them. This was described to be mainly due to the fact that’s just as cats and dogs, hogs are domestic animals as well. Thus, unless socialized with humans hogs will react in a frightened way when surrounded by people. Grandin observed that such details seen in meat packing plants often negatively impact the behavior of the animal at hand, and in order to properly address the issue while keeping the animals welfare in mind, she
