Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions, and Heart available in Paperback
Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions, and Heart
- ISBN-10:
- 0195163370
- ISBN-13:
- 9780195163377
- Pub. Date:
- 06/26/2003
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- ISBN-10:
- 0195163370
- ISBN-13:
- 9780195163377
- Pub. Date:
- 06/26/2003
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions, and Heart
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Overview
Following in the footsteps of Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen, Bekoff has spent the last 30 years studying animals of every stripe--from coyotes in Wyoming to penguins in Antarctica. He draws on this vast experience, as well as on the observations of other naturalists, to offer readers fascinating stories of animal behavior, including grooming and gossip, feeding patterns, dreaming, dominance, and mating behavior. He offers a thought-provoking look at animal cognition, intelligence, and consciousness and he presents vivid examples of animal passions, highlighting the deep emotional lives of our animal kin. All this serves as background for his thoughtful conclusions about humility and animal protection and animal well-being, where he urges a new paradigm of respect, grace, compassion, and love for all animals.
Minding Animals is an important contribution to our understanding of animal consciousness, a major work that will be a must read for anyone who loves nature.
"To find out about the rich emotional life of nonhuman species, read Minding Animals."---Natural History
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780195163377 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
| Publication date: | 06/26/2003 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Product dimensions: | 9.10(w) x 6.10(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
| Foreword | ix | |
| Preface | xv | |
| 1 | Chasing Coyotes and Moving "Yellow Snow" | 3 |
| 2 | Representing and Misrepresenting Animals | 40 |
| 3 | The Richness of Behavioral Diversity: A Potpourri of Animal Behavior | 56 |
| 4 | Animal Minds and What's in Them | 84 |
| 5 | Animal Emotions: Passionate Natures and Animal Feelings | 100 |
| 6 | Play, Cooperation, and the Evolution of Social Morality: Foundations of Fairness | 120 |
| 7 | Animal Welfare, Animal Rights, and Animal Protection | 133 |
| 8 | Human Intrusions Into Animals' Lives | 162 |
| 9 | Science, Nature, and Heart: Minding Animals and Redecorating Nature | 174 |
| 10 | Animals and Theology: Stepping Lightly with Grace, Humility, Respect, Compassion, and Love | 193 |
| References | 201 | |
| Index | 217 |
What People are Saying About This
"For those of us who have immersed ourselves in the well being of life forms other than human, the fact that they communicate and have feelings is as natural and understandable as breathing. Through this lens we see clearly how their well being is intricately interconnected with our own. In Minding Animals Marc Bekoff has done a wonderful job of showing us how learning to understand and 'mind' animals and their behavior leads us to recognize their feelings as well. Through their layers, we find even more richness and joy of life as we glimpse into ever deepe parts of ourselves. This book is fun, inspiring, thought-provoking and educational! What a great mix!"
"Except for relatively minor specializations that relate to whether we walk, run, fly or swim, all we vertebrate animals are physically stunningly similar. Most would also agree that the brain is an organ, as are stomachs, kidneys, and hearts, designed with functions and capacities useful for survival in often complex and indirect ways. There is no evidence, however, that what the brain does differs fundamentally across various species of vertebrates. Differences are in degree with respect to specific functions. In this readable, wide-ranging, and very stimulating book, Marc Bekoff takes this larger holistic view as a basis for a passionate exploration of how we should treat, and what we owe, our fellow-vertebrate creatures, who likely have many emotional and sensory survival mechanisms similar to our own."
"With this abundant narrative of Marc Bekoff a new age of intimacy between humans and animals has begun. The companionship, the play, the healing, the guidance, the protection provided by the animals, all these will be needed in the future as never before. Everyone should read Minding Animals, an amazingly thorough, delightful, and most important book."
"Just as the best doctors attain detailed and compassionate knowledge of the uniqueness of each patient, so too do the best behavioral biologists--with Marc Bekoff prominently among them--learn to recognize each animal as a distinct individual with its own internal life and experiences. By minding animals, we obtain our best scientific understanding of their evolution and behavior."
"A beautifully written and glorious celebration of the wonderful and diverse animal species who enrich our lives."
Interviews
Exclusive Author Essay
Animal Minds: An Insider's View
"Hey man, what are you doing with that yellow snow?" I told the hiker I was studying urine-marking in dogs, needed the urine to do my study to see how dogs made sense of scents, and continued on. He looked at me like I was the weirdest person he had ever seen and hurried away.
I wrote Minding Animals because I have lots of fun and love doing what I do for a living. I'm eager to share with readers the fascinating knowledge that my colleagues and I have accumulated about animal behavior and animal minds. I'm very interested in animal cognition and animal emotions because learning about what animals think about and how and what they feel, their passions, is critical to learning about them as individuals living in their own and human-dominated worlds. This book follows some of my others, including Species of Mind (with Colin Allen), Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare Strolling with Our Kin, and The Smile of a Dolphin: Remarkable Accounts of Animal Emotions. Many books about animals are written by people who don't study them firsthand, but a view from within provides unique insights not only into animals but also into those who study them. Minding Animals also considers a wide range of animals. I weave together anecdotes and empirical scientific data into readable and reliable discussions of amazing and awe-inspiring animal behavior.
I've always wanted to know what animals are thinking and feeling. I grew up in a home that was full of compassion and love, and my parents tell me I've always "minded animals." "Minding animals" means two things. First, it refers to caring for other animal beings, respecting them for who they are, appreciating their own world views, and wondering what and how they are feeling and why.
I've spent the past three decades studying the social behavior of a variety of animals, including coyotes, wolves, dogs, and penguins and other birds and have done research in places ranging from Jackson, Wyoming, to Antarctica. My main focus has been on social organization, communication, play behavior, emotions, cognition (animal intelligence and animal consciousness), and animal protection, well-being, and ethics.
I also discuss challenging questions about our never-ending intrusions into nature. I'm especially interested in our efforts to "redecorate" nature by moving animals from place to place. I argue that we need a more socially responsible, compassionate, and holistic science if we're to make progress solving the problems we've created all over our planet. I've long been a hands-on activist, so I stress the importance of proactive, compassionate activism: getting out and doing something.
After all is said and done, the notion of "interrelationship" is very important to me. I long for the time when all life is woven into a seamless tapestry of respect, compassion, humility, grace, and love. Love is the answer, no matter how fluffy it sounds. I'm an unwavering optimist, and this is how I maintain unflagging hope. (Marc Bekoff)