King Solomon's Ring is considered a classic on the subject of animal behavior. Konrad Lorenz was an ethologist (someone who studies animal behavior) who raised many animals at his home to study. Although he raised the animals and kept them at his home, he gave them free range of his home and the world around him in order to get a more realistic view of their behavior in their natural environment. In this book, Lorenz tells the reader about his observations of a number of animal species. The writing of the books is observational rather than scientific and very accessible to someone without a science background. One thing I found especially interesting is how World War II seemed to have affected Lorenz. He was German and much of his research was done in the 1930s and beyond. Although the book is about his observations of the animals, there are times when he allows how the war affected him to seep into the writing. For example after observing two doves tear each other apart in when he put them together in a cage for breeding purposes he writes, "Only in two other instances have I seen similar horrible lacerations inflicted on their own kind by vertebrates: once, as an observer of the embittered fights of cichlid fishes who sometimes actually skin each other, and again as a field surgeon, in the late war, where the highest of all vertebrates perpetrated mass mutilations on members of his own species." I would recommend this book to anyone interested in animal behavior or animals in general. There is a fun section on dogs and how their behavior is influenced by their wolf or jackal ancestors.

Share/Like this Review?