Review Being a Beast: Adventures Across the Species Divide by Charles Foster

Ultimately a pointless book, unless you desire to imagine alternate perspectives in a vague way. 

 You will never be a badger, so what does it matter what a badger thinks when it chews on earthworms? It may help you empathize with badgers, but you don’t need this book to tell you to empathize with other living beings. You either understand their value or don’t care. Thinking long and hard about them in relation to human beings and how our civilization encroaches upon theirs will take you further toward grokking them than will an abstract musing on their daily behaviors.
This is an immersive way to learn about badgers, otters, etc. but the digressions are not poetic. The delivery lacks poetic oomph. Probably would be better off reading The Peregrine. The niggling issue I stumbled over was the sense that Foster’s idea of being an animal is no more valid than my idea of being one, no more than a gross estimation of what being one might be like. You cannot even know the tiniest percentage of what it is like to be another human, so translating your sense of self into an organism which is typically thought to have no sense of self is an exercise in imagining less than you can already imagine.
A lot of speculation and wallowing around in stinky fields. The lack of human interaction and cell phones ringing can be somewhat spiritual and refreshing, but he still manages to anthropomorphize the main characters despite explicitly setting out to avoid doing so.