In humanity’s more than 100,000 year history, we have evolved from vulnerable creatures clawing sustenance from Earth to a sophisticated global society manipulating every inch of it. In short, we have become the dominant animal. Why, then, are we creating a world that threatens our own species? What can we do to change the current trajectory toward more climate change, increased famine, and epidemic disease? Renowned Stanford scientists Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich believe that intelligently addressing those questions depends on a clear understanding of how we evolved and how and why we’re changing the planet in ways that darken our descendants’ future. The Dominant Animal arms readers with that knowledge, tracing the interplay between environmental change and genetic and cultural evolution since the dawn of humanity. In lucid and engaging prose, they describe how Homo sapiens adapted to their surroundings, eventually developing the vibrant cultures, vast scientific knowledge, and technological wizardry we know today. But the Ehrlichs also explore the flip side of this triumphant story of innovation and conquest. As we clear forests to raise crops and build cities, lace the continents with highways, and create chemicals never before seen in nature, we may be undermining our own supremacy. The threats of environmental damage are clear from the daily headlines, but the outcome is far from destined. Humanity can again adapt—if we learn from our evolutionary past. Those lessons are crystallized in The Dominant Animal. Tackling the fundamental challenge of the human predicament, Paul and Anne Ehrlich offer a vivid and unique exploration of our origins, our evolution, and our future.

Human beings have long imagined their subjectivity, ethics, and ancestry with and through animals, yet not until the mid-twentieth century did contemporary thought reflect critically on animals' significance in human self-conception. Thinkers such as French philosopher Jacques Derrida, South African novelist J. M. Coetzee, and American theorist Donna Haraway have initiated rigorous inquiries into the question of the animal, now blossoming in a number of directions. It is no longer strange to say that if animals did not exist, we would have to invent them.This interdisciplinary and cross-cultural collection reflects the growth of animal studies as an independent field and the rise of "animality" as a critical lens through which to analyze society and culture, on a par with race and gender. Essays consider the role of animals in the human imagination and the imagination of the human; the worldviews of indigenous peoples; animal-human mythology in early modern China; and political uses of the animal in postcolonial India. They engage with the theoretical underpinnings of the animal protection movement, representations of animals in children's literature, depictions of animals in contemporary art, and the philosophical positioning of the animal from Aristotle to Derrida. The strength of this companion lies in its timeliness and contextual diversity, which makes it essential reading for students and researchers while further developing the parameters of the discipline.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson has long been interested in the relationships between humans and animals, and he's always been aware that there was something very special in our bond with dogs. No other animals love us in quite the same way as dogs love us. And it is mutual. Is it possible that we developed our capacity for love, sympathy, empathy, and compassion because of our long association with dogs? Over the past 40,000 years a collective domestication has occurred that brings us to where we are today--humans have formed intense bonds with dogs, and the adoration is almost always reciprocal--a love affair unmatched in the animal world.--From publisher description.

'SCOUT WOKE EVERY MORNING AT SIX ON THE DOT. SHE IMMEDIATELY STARTED CRYING...BUT SHE ALWAYS CHEERED UP THE MINUTE SHE HAD COMPANY... THE SOULFUL BROWN EYES THAT GREETED ME HAD LONG LASHES THAT GAVE SCOUT A SULTRY, FLIRTATIOUS LOOK; SHE WAS A CANINE VERSION OF VERONICA LAKE...' What happens when a smart NEW YORK TIMES editor decides to fill her empty nest with a puppy? This is the marvellously entertaining (and instructive) chronicle of an adorable golden retriever puppy named Scout. Part memoir, part manual, THE PUPPY DIARIES recounts Jill Abramson's experiences of the first year of puppy parenting.

Explores the complex relationship between humans and animals by examining philosophical, scientific, and literary material--

Intimate Nature : The Bond Between Women and Animals by Linda Ed. Hogan, Deena Ed. Metzger and Brenda Ed. Peterson. Fawcett Book Group,1998

There are more than 68 million dogs in the United States alone, and half of these pups belong to men. And because men identify with their pets, the secret to sniffing out Mr. Right may be...his pooch. Find out! The Editorial Director of Animal Fair , a lifestyle magazine for animal lovers, shares her own insights, amusing experiences, and extensive research on the subject with eager women everywhere. Using 32 different breeds of male as examples, she explores the link between human and canine, and the personality traits they share. Will an Irish Setter man always head to the pub? Can you successfully stay in the race with Mr. Greyhound? Are Rottweilers really dangerous? So many questions, so few answers...until now.

When animals and their symbolic representations—in the Royal Menagerie, in art, in medicine, in philosophy—helped transform the French state and culture. Peter Sahlins's brilliant new book reveals the remarkable and understudied “animal moment” in and around 1668 in which authors (including La Fontaine, whose Fables appeared in that year), anatomists, painters, sculptors, and especially the young Louis XIV turned their attention to nonhuman beings. At the center of the Year of the Animal was the Royal Menagerie in the gardens of Versailles, dominated by exotic and graceful birds. In the unfolding of his original and sophisticated argument, Sahlins shows how the animal bodies of the menagerie and others were critical to a dramatic rethinking of governance, nature, and the human. The animals of 1668 helped to shift an entire worldview in France—what Sahlins calls Renaissance humanimalism toward more modern expressions of classical naturalism and mechanism. In the wake of 1668 came the debasement of animals and the strengthening of human animality, including in Descartes's animal-machine, highly contested during the Year of the Animal. At the same time, Louis XIV and his intellectual servants used the animals of Versailles to develop and then to transform the symbolic language of French absolutism. Louis XIV came to adopt a model of sovereignty after 1668 in which his absolute authority is represented in manifold ways with the bodies of animals and justified by the bestial nature of his human subjects. 1668 explores and reproduces the king's animal collections—in printed text, weaving, poetry, and engraving, all seen from a unique interdisciplinary perspective. Sahlins brings the animals of 1668 together and to life as he observes them critically in their native habitats—within the animal palace itself by Louis Le Vau, the paintings and tapestries of Charles Le Brun, the garden installations of André Le Nôtre, the literary work of Charles Perrault and the natural history of his brother Claude, the poetry of Madeleine de Scudéry, the philosophy of René Descartes, the engravings of Sébastien Leclerc, the transfusion experiments of Jean Denis, and others. The author joins the nonhuman and human agents of 1668—panthers and painters, swans and scientists, weasels and weavers—in a learned and sophisticated treatment that will engage scholars and students of early modern France and Europe and readers broadly interested in the subject of animals in human history.

Esther Woolfson considers pre-historic human-animal interaction and traces the millennia-long evolution of conceptions of the soul and conscience in relation to the animal kingdom, and the consequences of our belief in human superiority. She also examines ethical issues surrounding our treatment of animals.

Most people agree that animals count morally. But how, exactly, should we take animals into account? According to a prominent position in contemporary philosophical discussions, animals and people have the very same moral status, so in our moral deliberations the otherwise similar interests of people and animals should be given the same weight and consideration. In How to Count Animals, more or less, Shelly Kagan rejects this view. In its place, Kagan sets out and defends a hierarchical approach, one in which people count more than animals do and some animals count more than others. Unfortunately, most moral theories have not been developed in such a way as to take into account these differences in moral status. By arguing for a hierarchical account of morality--and exploring what appropriate, status sensitive principles might look like--Kagan reveals just how much work needs to be done to arrive at an adequate view of our duties toward animals, and of morality more generally.

"Duncan Wheeler is a successful architect who savors the quotidian pleasures in life until a car accident leaves him severely paralyzed and haunted by the death of his young assistant. Now, Duncan isn't sure what there is left to live for, when every day has become a broken series of unsuccessful gestures. Duncan and his wife, Laura, find themselves in conflict as Duncan's will to live falters. Laura grows desperate to help him. An art conservator who has her own relationship to the repair of broken things, Laura brings home a highly trained helper monkey - a tufted capuchin named Ottoline - to assist Duncan with basic tasks. Duncan and Laura fall for this sweet, comical, Nutella-gobbling little creature, and Duncan's life appears to become more tolerable, fuller, and funnier. Yet the question persists: Is it enough?"--Publisher description.

Mary Ellen Mark is an internationally acclaimed photographer who has long been fascinated by the complex relationships between people and animals—as she puts it, "the anthropomorphic quality of animals, and the animalistic quality of man." This fascination has lured her again and again to Mexico and India, two countries that, despite their many differences, share "a primal force . . . that makes the relationship between man and beast even more obvious. There is a more fundamental and intimate working relationship between the people and animals, and this relationship is something I am drawn too and try to convey in many of my photographs."

Limpy is fed up of seeing his relatives run over and when he hears of a place in the Amazon, where human and toad live together in harmony, he resolves to find this place for himself and to take his cousin Goliath with him. The two toads make their bumpy way to the Amazonian jungle via the claws of a migratory bird and the underside of an aeroplane seat. But the jungle is not the Utopia that Limpy had imagined and it takes the advice of some Amazonian cane toads and one wise man to finally find the secret of a harmonious life with humans!

A cane toad's hilarious quest to discover the true meaning of Christmas! Limpy has a dream. A dream in which cane toads and humans live happily together. Surely this time Limpy will be able to show humans how nice cane toads can be? After all, it is Christmas. And isn't Christmas a time of peace and goodwill to all men? And cane toads?

Despite the opposition of Ancient Eric and Malcolm, Limpy goes on a quest to find a place where cane toads can be safe from humans and live in harmony.

Cane toads are Public Enemy Number One to most Australians. Limpy the cane toad is on a quest to improve their image - and save his family from imminent destruction! When one of his relatives features on a TV cooking show, destined to star as the main ingredient, Limpy sets out to rescue him and ends up on camera himself. Can Limpy use his 15 minutes of fame to get humans to lay off the cane-toad squashing? Or will that be a recipe for disaster? A stirring story of bravery, sacrifice and prime-time warts-and-all adventure. Morris Gleitzman is the bestselling author of Two Weeks with the Queen, Bumface and Once, Now, Then and Soon.

Two hauntingly atmospheric stories from author/songwriter Leon Rosselson. Both stories feature a child who is seen to be ‘different’ by his/her peer group and both suffer bullying, resolved through a mysterious force, a ghostly spirit. Sarah is a tall awkward girl, very slow and dreamy who a an amazing rapport with animals. Because she is different, she gets teased by her classmates. The teasing becomes taunting and the taunting becomes aggressive bullying. Sarah ignores it but then the leader of the bullying turns his attention towards her cat… but he doesn’t get away with it… The second story features Mark, a child with ‘special needs’ who can only talk through his glove puppet with a monkey face. Because he’s different he gets teased too but he’s befriended by Tim who tries to protect him. When Mark’s glove puppet vanishes, Mark doesn’t come to school. Tim tracks both down and discovers just how and why Mark came to be so different.