Dr. Eric Haseltine

And I've been especially interested in that phenomena of organisms whose worldview and way of thinking and neuroanatomy is so radically different from ours.

They cannot be like us.

And so that's exploring the negative space of the human condition.

So the main...

I guess, villain, you want to call it in this story?

Not exactly a villain, but is about as opposite a human as you could get.

Right?

I mean, in every way, this creature is about as different from us as you can get.

And the interactions between these completely alien us and them kinds of organisms are

uh, contrast creates conflict, which makes things interesting when each discovers their own limitations when looking through the world through the other's eyes.

And so, um, we, we spent a lot of time and there's a lot of hardcore neuroscience in the way this creature is defined.

And in some of the other characters, there's, there's a lot of, uh,

the kind of animal dimension.

I studied in my PhD work and later a lot of animal intelligence.

And my conclusion from studying animals is that they're way smarter than we think they are.

They're just not smart in ways that we're smart.

And this is what Ed Young is saying in his book.

And so there are two creatures in this story.

One is a genius parrot named Walter.

That's right.