Minding animals
Subtitle: awareness, emotions, and heart
By: Marc Bekoff ; with a foreword by Jane Goodall
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2002
Place of publication: New York, N.Y
Language: eng
Number of pages: 230
ISBN-13: 9780195150773
Subjects: Animal behavior; Mœurs et comportement; Animaux; Sociobiologie; Diergedrag; Comportamento animal
Description: Thinking bees, ice-skating buffaloes, dreaming rats, happy foxes, ecstatic elephants, despondent dolphins--in Minding Animals, Marc Bekoff takes us on an exhilarating tour of the emotional and mental world of animals, where we meet creatures who do amazing things and whose lives are filled with mysteries. 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, self-medication, feeding patterns, dreaming, dominance, and mating behavior. Many of these stories are truly incredible--chimpanzees medicating themselves with herbal remedies, elephants clearly mourning a dead group member--but this is not simply a catalog of amazing animal tales, for Bekoff also sheds light on many of the more serious issues surrounding animals. 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. Marc Bekoff has gone deep into the minds, hearts, spirits, and souls of animals, giving him profound insight into their lives, and no small insight into ours. 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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 201-216).
Table of contents: title: Chasing coyotes and moving "yellow snow"; title: Representing and misrepresenting animals; title: The richness of behavioral diversity : a potpourri of animal behavior; title: Animal minds and what's in them; title: Animal emotions : passionate natures and animal feelings; title: Play, cooperation, and the evolution of social morality : foundations of fairness; title: Animal welfare, animal rights, and animal protection; title: Human intrusions into animals' lives; title: Science, nature, and heart : minding animals and redecorating nature; title: Animals and theology : stepping lightly with grace, humility, respect, compassion, and love.