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Opening What Sheep Think About the Weather is like stepping into a busy and welcoming farmyard. Rowdy piglets, horses, dogs, cats, Sven the squirrel and a pheasant called Siegfried all bounce out of the pages to greet you. The reader immediately realises that, yes, this is a book about science, but it is also overflowing with warmth and personality.
Amelia Thomas is a writer and journalist, but first and foremost an animal lover. She has gathered a miscellany of creatures, both wild and tame, whom she tends on her farm in Canada. The desire to understand them better leads her to investigate all the many ways of listening to animals, from the scientific to the practical and spiritual.
Thomas talks to many experts in different fields, including animal behaviourists, anthrozoologists, pet psychics, animal trainers, Indigenous trackers and psychologists – all of whom listen in myriad different ways to an incredible range of species, from fruit flies to orcas.
The first big grapple for Thomas is science. Daunted by a perception that science is complex, and the preserve of academics, where the ‘correct’ answers are found, she soon discovers that the complexity is in fact in the nuance. In human communication with other animals, there are still so many areas of grey, unanswered questions and ultimately a complete lack of consensus.
As a result, she feels empowered to use her own judgement within the sea of “scientific diversity”. This leads to light-hearted experiments with the animals in her care – for example using voice buttons with the dogs and even trying to work out if earwigs have individual, discernible personalities.
The exploration of science also brings with it the discussion of ethics where animal studies have been carried out. This can be deeply sad and disturbing – such as chimpanzees taught sign language and then, when the experiment and attention are over, left to languish in a cage, suffering from signs of PTSD. An example is given of a caged chimp who, when visited by old ‘friend’ and researcher Bob Ingersoll, signed, “Bob, out, key.”
Despite the moments of sadness and reflection at the way humans sometimes treat animals, the prose is incredibly bouncy, as if communicated by an eager labrador. The tone is warm and easy, with our self-deprecating author – “Know thyself? I laugh. I barely know anything” – always starting from a position of curiosity and questions.
The real delight of the book is the humour. There is the slapstick entertainment of the animals, where nothing ever goes quite to plan, but also the depiction of real-world examples, such as cats trained to spy on people during the cold war.
Clever and amusing one-liners pepper the book, with many a play on words, such as “cowmunicators”. The made-up words mirror the description given by a researcher of how a parrot named an apple a “banerry” from the words the bird knew for banana and cherry. It’s no surprise that an entire chapter is dedicated to the humour, fun and joy that can be found instinctively in animals, and in our time spent with them, exploring questions such as, “Do bumblebees play?”
A central message of the book is that so much of communication is in fact listening. And so much of listening is non-verbal. Both aspects are worth remembering, whatever species you seek to connect with. A horse trainer explains that, for his clients, a new mindset can change “not just their relationship to their horse but every part of their lives. It’s very profound.”
For me, this new perspective brings changes in how I listen to my own companion animals, embarrassingly aware of the way we often want something from them, even if that is just a cuddle. The power of connection instead is far more euphoric, as Thomas writes: “You shrug off your humanness. You keen. You soar.”
What Sheep Think About the Weather by Amelia Thomas. Elliott & Thompson, 2025. ISBN: 9781783969234
