Biography

TEMPLE GRANDIN earned her Ph.D. in animal science from the University of Illinois, went on to become an associate professor at Colorado State University, and wrote two books on autism, including the seminal Thinking in Pictures. She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado.

CATHERINE JOHNSON, Ph.D., is a writer specializing in neuropsychiatry and the brain and is the author of three previous books. She lives in New York.


Synopsis

People with autism can often think the way animals think, which puts them in the perfect position to translate "animal talk." In this groundbreaking book Temple Grandin draws on her own experiences with autism as well as her distinguished career as an animal scientist to deliver an extraordinary message about how animals think, act, and feel. Funny, inspiring, and full of incredible insight, Animals in Translation will forever change the way we look at our fellow creatures.

I don't know if people will ever be able to talk to animals the way Doctor Doolittle could, or whether animals will be able to talk back. Maybe science will have something to say about that. But I do know people can learn to "talk" to animals, and to hear what animals have to say, better than they do now.
—From Animals in Translation

Why would a cow lick a tractor? Why are collies getting dumber? Why do dolphins sometimes kill for fun? How can a parrot learn to spell? How did wolves teach man to evolve? Temple Grandin draws upon a long, distinguished career as an animal scientist and her own experiences with autism to deliver an extraordinary message about how animals act, think, and feel. She has a perspective like that of no other expert in the field, which allows her to offer unparalleled observations and groundbreaking ideas.


Interview

Q: You design livestock-handling facilities and teach animal science at Colorado State University. You've written and edited books about autism and animal behavior, including Thinking in Pictures and the bestseller Animals in Translation. And you're also autistic. Is the phrase "I can't do this" in your vocabulary?
A: You just have to do it. I remember when I first started my design career, I had gone around to all the different feed yards in Arizona. I helped them work cattle, and I could see that this layout worked really well or this one didn't, the cattle balked at the shadow. Or at this feed yard, the facility was facing right into the sun. I spent three years learning how to lay out these facilities. Then I had a big feed yard come along and they wanted me to design a dip vat. They're obsolete now, but in the seventies, when cattle got lice and scabies, the cows had to swim through a dip vat to get that off. Now they have drugs they can inject or give orally for this. And I had to figure out how to design it because I didn't know anything about dip vats. But I said, "Yes, I'll do it." Boy, did I get on the phone and call up Texas A&M University and get their drawings, and I called up the USDA to get their drawings. Of course, there was no Internet in those days. I went around to all the different dip vats and I measured them and I watched cattle going through them and I basically made sure I got all the information on the state of the art of dip vats, and then I was going to make something better. And I did.

I figured out a way for the cattle to enter the dip vat really easily. Now, they used to have these dreadful slides and the cattle would slide in there and flip over and drown and everything else. It was horrible. I figured out a way to make an optical illusion, so the cattle would just walk in and step out over the water and drop in, because their heads have to be submerged. They thought they could walk on water and they'd sort of drop in and submerge. And I figured out how to do that. That was something new that I made for dip vats. If there's something I don't know, I don't try to bluff my way through it. My first reaction is to get on the phone and call up someone who does know. Or now instantly go to Google™ and try to find out. You've got to get the knowledge. And a lot of people just don't do that. I told the feed yard that I needed three weeks to get the drawings to them. And the next day I was on the phone calling everyone up, and five days later, I had the information I needed. You find the best information and make the best thing you can make.

Q: You coauthored Animals in Translation with Catherine Johnson. Can you talk about the writing process?
A: Catherine wanted to hear how I talked. Now if you go look at some of my scientific journal articles, they're written very technical. And Catherine wanted the book to sound like how I talk. We spent probably three weeks, over a period of two years, of solid time on the phone. I mean, we talked on the phone I don't know how many hours. About every week we'd have these two-, three-hour phone conversations. And she wanted me to tell it to her. She didn't want me to write it and send it to her; she wanted me to tell it to her. I'd find an article in Science and she wanted me to tell her about the article in Science. She wanted to hear me tell it so she could get my voice. In the back of the book, there's a "Behavior and Training Troubleshooting Guide." I wrote that, and that's written in my standard technical style of writing. That's the one part of the book that's totally authored by me.

Q: So it's your words, your voice, but she wrote it.
A: That's right. That's exactly what it is.

Q:Do you think she captured your voice?
A:I think she did. Yes, she certainly did. Catherine's a wonderful writer and that enabled the book to reflect my voice.

Q: You say that autism gives you an advantage over feedlot owners who hire you to manage their animals. You're able to recognize details that normal people don't notice. How does this allow you to see what animals see?
A: I think one of the things that helped is I'm a visual thinker; I don't think in language. It's a lot easier to understand the animals if you don't think in language. When I first started out in the feed yards, I wanted to figure out why is this cattle-handling facility working better than another cattle-handling facility. My first inclination was to get down in the chutes and see what the cattle were actually seeing. And feed-yard managers thought that was crazy, when I did that back in the seventies. It seemed just totally obvious to me to get down in there and see, "What are these cattle actually seeing?" I thought in pictures. And I thought that everyone thought in pictures. It wasn't until I got into writing Thinking in Pictures that I really began to understand how my thinking process is totally different from other people's thinking process. And the more I learned about that, the more insight that gave me into animals, because I thought, "Wait a minute, that's how animals have got to think. There's no other way they could think." They've got to categorize sensory-based information: pictures, smells, sounds, the way things feel. These are all things that can be put into categories. Categories are the beginning of thinking.

Q: What can cat and dog owners learn about their pets by reading Animals in Translation?
A: I think they can learn what motivates an animal. One of the big mistakes people make is they mix up fear and aggression. Fear and aggression are two very different emotions, and if you punish fear-based behavior, that tends to make fear-based behavior worse. I've talked to a lot of cat and dogs owners who have read the book and they said it really gave them insight into how their animals think. And one little thing in the book that really helped them is, "Don't pat the animal, stroke it." And I've had several dog owners come up to me and say that really changed the way the dog responded to them. Don't pat it, because sometimes the dog interprets that as hitting. You want to stroke the animal. No matter what animal you have, the book's going to give you a lot of insight into how animals think and feel. I have many, many people who have dogs tell me that it has given them a much better understanding of their dog.

Q: For more than thirty years, you've studied animals and helped improve their lives. What has this work taught you about yourself?
A: One thing it's taught me is if you work really hard, you can get a lot of things done. When I was a young child, they didn't think I was going to accomplish much of anything. And early in my life, I had to prove to people I wasn't stupid or mentally retarded. And that was a big motivator. When I was in high school, I was not a good student. I was a bored student, and I can't emphasize enough the importance of a mentor. I had a great mentor, a science teacher, who motivated me to study and gave me a reason to be motivated. Any student—he doesn't have to be autistic—who's bored in high school and having a difficult time . . . a really good teacher who could serve as a mentor can really turn that student around.

Q: In the book you mention that you went away to a school for "emotionally disturbed" kids, because in the sixties, autism hadn't been identified. How did this experience affect you?
A: When I was in high school, all the kids teased me. I was like the weird nerd kid, and I had a terrible time in a large school with four hundred other students. In teenage life, it was a hypersocial world. And I didn't fit into that at all. I got into a fight with a girl. Then I went away to the boarding school, which was much smaller, and that's where I met my science teacher. And the thing I just can't emphasize enough is that a mentor, a teacher who can be a mentor, really may make a big difference.

Q: That may be some good advice for a parent with an autistic child.
A: Absolutely. The problem with autism is the spectrum goes all the way from someone who's going to remain nonverbal for the rest of her life to genius scientists, musicians, artists, and other people who do really great things. And high school is often the worst time for these kids. These are the kind of kids who used to be called computer nerds and they're the odd kids who don't have many friends. I think some of these really smart kids need to be pulled out of that mess and maybe take some university courses. Again it gets back to having the right teachers to motivate that bored, upset student who's being teased.

Q: Have there been other defining moments in your life?
A: People are always looking for a magic turning point. There is no single magic turning point. The thing about being autistic is you gradually learn more and more. And I put more and more information on the hard drive of my mind, then I've got more information I can categorize. My mind works just like Google™ for images: You put in keywords, it brings up pictures, and then after a while, it gradually has a tendency to get off the subject. But it's putting different things into categories, and the more information I have, the less autistic I act.

I have to say that the most important things were the very good early childhood education program my mother put together and, in high school, mentor teachers. Then when I got into industry, there were some good managers. People who recognized my talents. I was able to sell myself by selling my skills. People would look at my drawings and they'd go, "You're really weird, but you drew that? Oh, wow! You drew that? That's just wonderful!"

Another turning point was discovering that antidepressants would stop my horrible, horrible panic attacks. I would not be here today without antidepressant medication. As I got older, the panic attacks and the anxiety attacks got worse and worse, and I thought I was being stalked by a lion. And the medication stopped that. Now, there are other people, they don't need medication. This is where people's biology is different. I was one of the ones whose life was saved by medication.

Along with my high school science teacher, wonderful people out in the meat industry like Ted Gilbert at the Red River Feedyard—I've put them in the back of my book—and Tom Rohrer, the Swift plant manager, helped me get my career established. But then, you see, as I got older, the anxieties got worse; I couldn't function. But where antidepressants really work, it's not the depression, it's for anxiety attacks. They are extremely powerful antipanic drugs. I know a lot of visual thinkers who are on Prozac®, because the visual thinkers tend to be the ones who get the anxiety. I think the traits are linked. It's not a matter of believing in medication or not believing in it. It's a matter of some people really need it—other people don't. And I really want to emphasize that. It depends upon the biology of the person. But people like me need it and others can be just fine by doing other kinds of therapies that aren't medication. That's where different people are different.

Q: What's a common question people ask you about animals?
A: People always ask me, "Are cattle afraid of being slaughtered?" I have found that cattle behave exactly the same way at the slaughter plant as they behave when they're in a chute getting vaccinated. And if they knew they were going to get slaughtered, they should be behaving a lot wilder in the slaughter chute. Well, that's not what they do. I find that if you take out all of the distractions that they're afraid of—like shadows, bright spots, reflections, things that are too dark—they'll walk right up the chute.

Q: You make this process easier for animals.
A: That's right. You can get into whether or not you should eat meat. I've decided I'm going to eat meat. But I feel very strongly that we've got to treat animals right, and we've got to give them a good life when we're raising them. There's a principle in biology called symbiosis: a mutually beneficial relationship. We've got to give animals a decent life, and there are some problems on the farms that need to be fixed.

I'm also really concerned about some of the genetic abuses. Look at the bulldog. It's been selectively bred to the point where it needs to have a cesarean section to have its babies. I think it's disgusting that that's been done to the bulldog. We all need to worry about farm animals, but let's not be doing things to pet animals that are really atrocious. There are so many hip problems in dogs. Why are we breeding that? I have real problems with that. You're breeding something where you're causing a disability. I'm concerned about all animals and what people are doing to them genetically.

Q: How do you fight this in your career?
A: Someone wrote a really nasty letter in a magazine that really upset me. It said that if I really cared about animals, I wouldn't just be working on slaughtering, I'd be working on farm stuff. The problem is, you can only work on so many things and actually get something done. You can only do so many things, and I'm not an ideological kind of person. I'm a person who wants to see results on the ground, so I'm going to work on things where I can get results on the ground. I'm a very practical kind of person. One of my big concerns today is we're getting into a society where we're getting fewer and fewer people who do practical things.

Q: As a teacher, lecturer, and consultant, you meet people all over the world. What's one thing you want people to remember about your work?
A: One thing that's really important to me is that my knowledge goes on. Let's look at the autism field first: I think I've given a lot of people a lot of insight into autism—a lot of teachers and parents. And in the livestock world, my designs have been used around the world, and I think that I have knowledge that's of value. That's the thing that's most important. I am what I do. Going back to the autism and Asperger field, you've got so many of these Asperger kids who are getting teased in high school, and this is why I put so much emphasis on developing their strengths. Develop the thing that the person's good at. We've got to develop their skill area so they have a career and have a life after high school. I think that's something that's so important.

I think that my work has given a lot of insight into how animals think and feel. It's difficult for people to imagine thinking with no language. So let's look at what's important in animal behavior: thinking without language and understanding how that works. Another really important thing when working with animals is understanding their motivation. Don't be mixing up things like fear and aggression.

I hope that my work is going to give people insight into both autism and animal behavior. I've worked really hard with my equipment designing, and it has improved how cattle are handled and has reduced stress on cattle. I'm trying to do things out in the practical world and actually improve things and make them better. I'm not into ideology; I'm only into practical results on the ground.