The Other Animals

By: Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Ken Liu, R. Eric Thomas, Lulu Miller, Shruti Swamy, Max McClure, Kaeli Swift, Kelly Weinersmith

Narrated by: Ken Liu, Lulu Miller, Max McClure, Shruti Swamy, Daniel Mallory Ortberg, R. Eric Thomas, Kaeli Swift, Kelly Weinersmith

[Explicit Content]
In The Other Animals, a worm breaks up with a snail, a vulture contemplates the act of killing, a whale falls in love with a song, and more.

This funny, moving collection of eight stories - written by a crew of scientists, literary writers, and comics, and informed by animal behavioral science - explores what animal perspectives can show humans about the world we all share. It includes stories by Daniel Mallory Ortberg (Something That May Shock and Discredit You), R. Eric Thomas (Here for It), Ken Liu (The Paper Menagerie), Lulu Miller (Why Fish Don’t Exist), Kelly Weinersmith (Soonish), Shruti Swamy (O’Henry Award winner), Max McClure (Grist), and Kaeli Swift (Biosphere).

Cover art by Noah Grigni.

©2019 Audible Originals, LLC (P)2019 Audible Originals, LLC.

Lovely!

A collection of animal-centric short stories. Some funny, some sad, all of them makes you think. I'm always on the lookout for good xenofiction (non-human POVs), and while some of these take a lot of artistic liberty with regards to biology, I enjoyed every story regardless.

Hard to hear

The introduction to this book made it sound intriguing and a tempting collection of stories. But the perpetual background music was too distracting to enable concentrating on the speech. Had to give up and am sorry but Instead will try snd buy the print version as I still hope to read this book.

Excellent

These are classics. Funny, sweet, scary and Wonderful! Thank you to all the Authors and Readers.

Lovely collection - funny and touching

This was a lovely read - a little set of quirky stories that invite the reader to consider new perspectives. They range widely in tone and focus, but that's part of the fun. Something here is guaranteed to touch you.

Unique Storytelling from Unsung Perspectives

This was such a delight to listen to! Definitely a fan for anyone who has liked Sy Montgomery's body of work, especially her popular collection of short stories, "How to Be a Good Creature". This collection of short stories, however, are written by different people, are fictional instead of memoir-based, and are told from the perspective of anthropomorphised animals. While most of the stories are from the point of view of creatures who we would not usually see as charismatic, such as snail-symbiotic worms or vultures, there are also stories about crows and whales, both of which have captured the fascination of humans for centuries. Some stories were better than others, but overall this has real quality in its humor, inventiveness, and discussion of possibilities.

short story compilation

some are more intriguing then others but they flow quite well. The stories are all from the perspectives of animals which is quite cool

Humane elucidation of "umwelt"

This Audible Original has a lot to accomplish within its allotted time and the Editor's Note does much of the heavy lifting before you hear anything from the talented, immersive players. Art cultivates understanding; a stake in what happens to another yields empathy. Because of this felt introduction, we know how the environment and our specific response to the world around us affect, well, everything. And what if the assorted authors and thinkers here set about, as animals, to convey how very similar, sometimes, our interior life is to a creature we have very little invested in, like a symbiotic worm or a desert scorpion or a wisecracking scavenger deploying a cash-for-carrion scheme? The whole evokes those "Just So" stories from childhood, except these animal explainers are funnier, more reflective, and prone to streams of consciousness.

Beautiful telling of themes not usually told.

A different type of storytelling, warm, loving, scary and disgusting in the best possible way

Explore the Umwelt

The weirdest thing about listening to this was how natural it seemed. It felt perfectly reasonable to contemplate the concerns of invertebrates or carrion eaters. The performers were great, and their reading, the unusual circumstances, and the quality of the writing come together to make very memorable characters.

Previously, I have never really enjoyed short stories or audiobooks, but this collection seems to have all the benefits of those media without any of the pitfalls. I'm recommending this book to my friends and family, and I guess, by writing this review, to a whole world of strangers on the internet. Give it a listen.

So Creative!

View life through the eyes of various animals, and not the cute ones. Artfully written, especially some of the romantic interludes. Don't miss it.