Es un hecho que en los ultimos diez anos, gracias a que los estudiosos del comportamiento animal han cambiado su foco de interes, de los primates, aves y cetaceos, al estudio de la inteligencia canina, hemos aprendido mas sobre el comportamiento canino que en todo el siglo veinte. El tema de este libro es muy novedoso , la cognicion canina. Es la primera vez que unos cientificos condensan en un texto divulgativo todo lo descubierto en el tema del intelecto canino. Como la ciencia cognitiva ha llegado a entender la genialidad de los perros gracias a experimentos ludicos, utilizando juguetes, tazas, pelotas y cubos. Pruebas que cualquier dueno podria hacer en su casa con su propio perro. Algunos de los descubrimientos que se exponen en las paginas que siguen sorprenderan incluso al mas experimentado de los duenos: la gran cantidad de palabras que pueden entender los perros, su extraordinaria capacidad para ?leer? nuestras emociones y su maximo logro: haber llegado a interpretar nuestros gestos !tan bien! Si alguna vez se ha preguntado por que su perro siempre se hace un lio con la correa para rodear una farola o un arbol o, si cuando esta triste, su perro puede sentir empatia, si tienen los perros sentido de culpabilidad o de la justicia, en este libro encontrara las respuestas.

A powerful new theory of human nature suggests that our secret to success as a species is our unique friendliness

“Brilliant, eye-opening, and absolutely inspiring—and a riveting read. Hare and Woods have written the perfect book for our time.”—Cass R. Sunstein, author of How Change Happens and co-author of Nudge

For most of the approximately 300,000 years that Homo sapiens have existed, we have shared the planet with at least four other types of humans. All of these were smart, strong, and inventive. But around 50,000 years ago, Homo sapiens made a cognitive leap that gave us an edge over other species. What happened?

Since Charles Darwin wrote about “evolutionary fitness,” the idea of fitness has been confused with physical strength, tactical brilliance, and aggression. In fact, what made us evolutionarily fit was a remarkable kind of friendliness, a virtuosic ability to coordinate and communicate with others that allowed us to achieve all the cultural and technical marvels in human history. Advancing what they call the “self-domestication theory,” Brian Hare, professor in the department of evolutionary anthropology and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University and his wife, Vanessa Woods, a research scientist and award-winning journalist, shed light on the mysterious leap in human cognition that allowed Homo sapiens to thrive. 

But this gift for friendliness came at a cost. Just as a mother bear is most dangerous around her cubs, we are at our most dangerous when someone we love is threatened by an “outsider.” The threatening outsider is demoted to sub-human, fair game for our worst instincts. Hare’s groundbreaking research, developed in close coordination with Richard Wrangham and Michael Tomasello, giants in the field of cognitive evolution, reveals that the same traits that make us the most tolerant species on the planet also make us the cruelest. 

Survival of the Friendliest offers us a new way to look at our cultural as well as cognitive evolution and sends a clear message: In order to survive and even to flourish, we need to expand our definition of who belongs.