Loving Animals


Book Description

In a book aimed at advocates, the author argues that in order to end animal cruelty, activists need to better understand the profound emotional attachment many people have with animals.




Aesop’s Animals


Book Description

Despite originating more than two-and-a-half thousand years ago, Aesop's Fables are still passed on from parent to child, and are embedded in our collective consciousness. The morals we have learned from these tales continue to inform our judgements, but have the stories also informed how we regard their animal protagonists? If so, is there any truth behind the stereotypes? Are wolves deceptive villains? Are crows insightful geniuses? And could a tortoise really beat a hare in a race? In Aesop's Animals, zoologist Jo Wimpenny turns a critical eye to the fables to discover whether there is any scientific truth to Aesop's portrayal of the animal kingdom. She brings the tales into the twenty-first century, introducing the latest findings on some of the most fascinating branches of ethological research – the study of why animals do the things they do. In each chapter she interrogates a classic fable and a different topic – future planning, tool use, self-recognition, cooperation and deception – concluding with a verdict on the veracity of each fable's portrayal from a scientific perspective. By sifting fact from fiction in one of the most beloved texts of our culture, Aesop's Animals explores and challenges our preconceived notions about animals, the way they behave, and the roles we both play in our shared world.




The New Animals


Book Description

Winner of the 2018 Acorn Prize, New Zealand’s highest fiction award, Pip Adam’s The New Animals is a work of artistic ambition and political urgency. Set in the Auckland fashion scene in 2016, The New Animals moves over the course of one night through the hopes, misapprehensions, resentments, and regrets of a small group of fashion-industry workers, divided by generation and class. The young and rich act like nothing can touch them; the tired Gen-Xers feel forever adrift. On this particularly stressful night, hairdressers, patternmakers, stylists, and a makeup artist are tasked with preparing for a last-minute photoshoot without clothes or clear directions. Caught up in the small dramas of their lives, while around them the world is fast becoming uninhabitable, the group toils against the impossible pressure until one of them decides to break away. Like a twisted contemporary heir to Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, The New Animals is a brilliant and unforgettable dive beneath the surface of life, uncovering the common ground of humanity, as well as the common plight.




Adam's Task


Book Description

A groundbreaking meditation on our human-animal relationships and the moral code that binds it. Adam's Task, Vicki Hearne’s innovative masterpiece on animal training, brings our perennial discussion of the human-animal bond to a whole new metaphysical level. Based on studies of literary criticism, philosophy, and extensive hands-on experience in training, Hearne asserts, in boldly anthropomorphic terms, that animals (at least those that interact more with humans) are far more intelligent than we assume. In fact, they are capable of developing an understanding of "the good," a moral code that influences their motives and actions. Drawing on an eclectic range of influences—Nietzsche, T. S. Eliot, Disney animal trainer William Koehler, and Genesis from the Bible, among others—Hearne writes in contemplative, exploratory, and brilliant prose as she interweaves personal anecdotes with philosophy. Hearne develops an entirely new system of animal training that contradicts modern animal behavioral research and that, as her examples show, is astonishingly effective. Widely praised, highly influential, and now with a new foreword by New York Times bestselling author Karen Joy Fowler, Adam’s Task will make every trainer, animal psychologist, and animal-lover stop, think, and question.




D'Aulaires' Book of Animals


Book Description

THE CELEBRATED HUSBAND-AND-WIFE TEAM OF INGRI AND EDGAR PARIN D’AULAIRE prepared this exceptionally beautiful volume for their own son Ola, and it is as fresh and enchanting today as it was when it first sprung from their imaginations. D’Aulaires’ Book of Animals introduces young children to the creatures of every continent. Here more than fifty animals lithographed in full color form one side of a book that can be read page by page or unfolded to form a continuous panorama; the flipside of the panorama reveals the nighttime world of the animals in the very same settings. Each tableau presents the subjects in their native environments—from the tropical to the arctic—and is rendered with the exemplary richness of color and delightful understanding of the children’s world that distinguish the d’Aulaires’ much-loved retellings of the Norse and Greek myths and their wildly playful Book of Trolls. Young children, meeting animals from all over the world for the first time, will be delighted not only with the animals themselves but with the simple and engaging text which provides information about the way they act, the world they live in, and—best of all—the sounds they make. D’Aulaires’ Book of Animals is not only a perfect picture book for preschoolers, but a work of art that can be enjoyed by all.




Mark Twain’s Book of Animals


Book Description

"For those unaware—as I was until I read this book—that Mark Twain was one of America's early animal advocates, Shelley Fisher Fishkin's collection of his writings on animals will come as a revelation. Many of these pieces are as fresh and lively as when they were first written, and it's wonderful to have them gathered in one place." —Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation and The Life You Can Save “A truly exhilarating work. Mark Twain's animal-friendly views would not be out of place today, and indeed, in certain respects, Twain is still ahead of us: claiming, correctly, that there are certain degraded practices that only humans inflict on one another and upon other animals. Fishkin has done a splendid job: I cannot remember reading something so consistently excellent."—Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author of When Elephants Weep and The Face on Your Plate "Shelley Fisher Fishkin has given us the lifelong arc of the great man's antic, hilarious, and subtly profound explorations of the animal world, and she's guided us through it with her own trademark wit and acumen. Dogged if she hasn't." —Ron Powers, author of Dangerous Water: A Biography of the Boy Who Became Mark Twain and Mark Twain: A Life




The New Breed


Book Description

For readers of The Second Machine Age or The Soul of an Octopus, a bold, exciting exploration of how building diverse kinds of relationships with robots—inspired by how we interact with animals—could be the key to making our future with robot technology work There has been a lot of ink devoted to discussions of how robots will replace us and take our jobs. But MIT Media Lab researcher and technology policy expert Kate Darling argues just the opposite, suggesting that treating robots with a bit of humanity, more like the way we treat animals, will actually serve us better. From a social, legal, and ethical perspective, she shows that our current ways of thinking don’t leave room for the robot technology that is soon to become part of our everyday routines. Robots are likely to supplement—rather than replace—our own skills and relationships. So if we consider our history of incorporating animals into our work, transportation, military, and even families, we actually have a solid basis for how to contend with this future. A deeply original analysis of our technological future and the ethical dilemmas that await us, The New Breed explains how the treatment of machines can reveal a new understanding of our own history, our own systems, and how we relate—not just to nonhumans, but also to one another.




Animals Work


Book Description

Around the world, animals do all kinds of work in this handsomely-painted board book. Animals herd, carry, pull . . . and keep us company! Caldecott Honoree Ted Lewin presents a dozen different animals working across the world, showcasing the many different ways humans and animals live and work together. This sturdy board book, illustrated in realistic watercolors, transports young readers from an open field where a dog herds sheep to a wintry forest where a reindeer pulls a sledge across the snow. Depicting the give and take of human relationships with a dozen different animals, this is a perfect book to share with curious young readers!




How Animals Work


Book Description

A study of comparative physiology that explains the ways in which specific bodily systems function in different species.




The Big Book of Animals of the World


Book Description

A large format board book of animals from all over the world, illustrated with charm and humor. Each spread in this big book focuses on a continent or ocean and features animals unique to that part of the world. Simple but charming, this is a great mix of world tour and day at the zoo, with plenty of room for spontaneous storytelling.