The emotional lives of animals : a leading scientist explores animal joy, sorrow, and empathy--and why they matter

Based on Marc Bekoff's years of experience studying the social communication patterns of a wide range of animals, this important book shows that animals have rich emotional lives. Not only can animal emotions teach us about love, empathy, and compassion, argues Bekoff — they require us to radically rethink our current relationship of domination and abuse of animals. Award-winning scientist Bekoff skillfully blends extraordinary stories and anecdotes of animal grief, joy, embarrassment, anger, and love with the latest scientific research confirming the existence of emotions that commonsense experience has long implied. The author also explores the evolutionary purposes of emotions in a wide range of different species, showing how science is discovering brain structures that produce emotions, how we can track an evolutionary continuum based on shared brain structures among species, and how new information is being revealed by noninvasive neurological research techniques. Filled with Bekoff's light humor and touching stories, The Emotional Lives of Animals is a clarion call for reassessing both how we view animals and how we treat them.