Animals' Best Friends: Putting Compassion to Work for Animals in Captivity and in the Wild

Summary

As people come to understand more about animals' inner lives we feel a growing compassion, a desire to better their lives. But how do we translate this compassion into helping other creatures, both those that are and are not our pets? Bringing together the latest science with heartfelt storytelling, Animals' Best Friends reveals the opportunities we have in everyday life to help animals in our homes, in the wild, in zoos, and in science labs, as well as those considered to be food.

Barbara J. King, an expert on animal cognition and emotion, guides us on a journey both animal and deeply human. We meet cows living relaxed lives in an animal sanctuary—and cows with plastic portals in their sides at a university research station. We observe bison free-roaming at Yellowstone National Park and chimpanzees confined to zoos. We reflect on animal testing as King shares her own experience as the survivor of a particularly nasty cancer.

This is a book not of shaming and limitation, but of uplift and expansion. Though an animal expert, she is just like the rest of us: on a journey still, learning each day how to be better, and do better, for animals. By turning compassion into action on behalf of animals, we not only improve animals' lives—we also immeasurably enrich our own.