In "Animate: How Animals Shape the Human Mind," acclaimed science writer Michael Bond explores how animals have profoundly influenced our minds and cultures. Drawing on cutting-edge insights from psychology, anthropology, literature and neuroscience, he traces the varied ways their lives have affected ours.
Scientists today are challenging the assumption that we are separate from and superior to animals, showing that they too possess intelligence, empathy, creativity, and even the ability to use tools. If everything that supposedly makes us human is shared with other creatures, where does that leave us? And if we are not as exceptional as we thought, how should we be treating the animals we live alongside?
Michael Bond, the author of "Wayfinding: The Art and Science of How We Find and Lose Our Way," is a writer specializing in human behaviour and a former editor and reporter at New Scientist. He won the 2015 British Psychological Society Prize for The Power of Others and is currently teaching writing as a Royal Literary Fund fellow at Oxford Brookes University.
