The Emotional Lives of Animals (Revised)

In this revised and expanded edition of a seminal and award-winning exploration of animal emotion, sentience, and cognition, a prominent animal researcher discusses and incorporates the surge of new science in a fascinating and vital field of study When award-winning scientist Marc Bekoff penned the first edition of The Emotional Lives of Animals in 2007, he predicted that in twenty years’ time our understanding of animal cognition and emotion would be “richer; more accurate, and possibly different.” This turned out to be an understatement. Not only has the field seen an explosion of new and startling research, but the popular appetite for this research has grown as well, spawning podcasts, countless articles, and bestselling books from Frans de Waal, Carl Safina, and Ed Yong, among others. Based on Bekoff’s years of studying social communication in a wide range of species, this book was one of the first to establish the rich emotional lives of animals. Bekoff skillfully blends extraordinary stories of animal joy, empathy, grief, embarrassment, anger, and love with the latest scientific research confirming the existence of emotions that common sense and experience have long implied. Filled with light humor and touching stories, The Emotional Lives of Animals is a clarion call for reassessing both how we view and how we treat animals.