Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal

By Jon Hersey

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

By Frans de Waal

New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2017.

352 pp. $16.95 (paperback).

As the adoring owner of two mutts, I’m often impressed by their apparent intelligence. They seem perfectly capable of telling me when they want to eat, or go potty, or play. And although neither is a match for Chaser, the b…