Everything that supposedly makes us human is shared with other creatures.

A new book traces how humans became disconnected from wild animals, wrongly thinking of ourselves as superior.

The author focuses on animals in human psychology and how they have influenced our minds.

In his beautifully written, wide-ranging, and impeccably researched book Animate: How Animals Shape the Human Mind, acclaimed author Michael Bond carefully traces how we, humans, arrived at where we are today, disconnected from wild animals and their homes and wrongly thinking of ourselves as superior to other animals and separate from and above them.1 This humancentric arrogance is driven by indifference and the fear of seeing ourselves in other animals, resulting in an era called the Anthropocene, often called "the age of humanity," when, in fact, it's more appropriately called "the rage of inhumanity." Bond aptly and correctly concludes that, without other animals, "we can hardly be human." Animate will make you rethink who they (other animals) truly are and who we truly are, and we can only hope it will result in people changing their speciesist ways of interacting with our animal kin, with whom we actually share a large number of traits.

Marc Bekoff: Why did you write Animate, and why did you decide on this title?

Michael Bond: In the middle of an ecological crisis, it seems like a good time to explore the psychological relationship between humans and the natural world and animals in particular: how they have influenced our development and culture, and how the way we think about them has changed over time, because the way we think about them profoundly affects the way we treat them. Our knowledge about the sentience and intelligence of animals has grown hugely in recent years, and we can no longer hide behind the conceit that they are categorically different from us. The title Animate, which can be read as an adjective or a verb, is meant to evoke the bustle and drama of the natural world, and the idea that animals are alive in our minds and have been since our prehistoric ancestors lived among them.

MB: How does your book relate to your background and general areas of interest?

MB: I generally write about human behaviour, in particular how people interact with and are shaped by the world around them. That could be the social world, the physical world, or, in this case, the world of other creatures. Wild places can feel both enchanting and perilous, and animals—even though we are one of them—are often mysterious to us, familiar yet hard to reach. I find the psychology of those liminal states, the boundary between human and other and between culture and nature, endlessly fascinating.

MB: Who do you hope to reach?

MB: I hope it will attract anyone interested in human-animal relationships or how the animate world has influenced the human mind, or anyone who enjoys probing the mysteries of the human condition. It is aimed at nonspecialist readers. While it ranges across quite a few disciplines, including psychology, philosophy, anthropology, biology, history, neuroscience, and religion, it is designed to read like a narrative rather than a thesis. It spans 40,000 years of human history and culture, so hopefully there’s something for everyone.

MB: What are some of the topics you consider, and what are some of your major messages?

MB: The book starts with our Palaeolithic ancestors who painted extraordinary, vivid images of animals on the walls of caves. They lived surrounded by animals and in competition with them, hunting them for food and fearing them as predators, a reality that shaped the development of their brains in particular ways. For instance, they became highly attuned to the forms and movements of animals, a cognitive attribute that we still possess. This may explain why, though wild animals are completely absent from most people’s lives, they are still prevalent in our psychology―in our dreams, hallucinations, delusions, and psychiatric disorders―and in the myths and stories we tell. In some ways, we are just as "animal-minded" as our prehistoric forebears.

A good part of the book describes the change in our relationship with animals that started around 10,000 years ago during the transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of permanent settlements and agriculture. This culminated during the Middle Ages in what is known as "the great divide," the (erroneous) assumption that humans are biologically, cognitively, and morally distinct from other creatures. This notion that we are separate and superior has been used for hundreds of years to justify both our dominion over the natural world and our cruel treatment of animals. It has defined the cultural evolution of humankind, since it describes not only a division between human and nonhuman, but between nature and culture, body and mind, matter and spirit.

In between these rather serious themes are lots of stories of mythological animals, of animals in folk tales and fables, of animals who were tried in medieval courts, of people who have lived with wild animals and others who were buried with them, of animal phobics, hoarders and obsessives, and even of people who believe that they are animals. Despite the best efforts of theologians and intellectuals, people have always been fascinated by animals and eager to explore the boundaries between species.

MB: How does your work differ from others that are concerned with some of the same general topics?

MB: There have been lots of great books in recent years on animal sentience and quite a few on how we have mistreated animals. I believe Animate is a little different in that it focuses on animals in human psychology and how they have influenced our minds. It is a book about animals, but also very much about humans, what we share with animals, and how we struggle with the idea that we are one of them.

MB: Are you hopeful that, as people learn more about animal emotions, they will rethink who they truly are and who we truly are?

MB: I think we will get to a critical point when our accumulating knowledge about animal behaviour that points to their rich emotional lives will spill over into the public consciousness and uproot our moral norms in this area. Like many people, I very much hope it will happen sooner rather than later, for our sake as much as the animals. When we start treating other animals with more compassion, we may find that we treat each other better, too, since the "othering" of animals is often used as a proxy to exaggerate differences between human groups. When you know that someone or something suffers in a similar way to you, you’re more likely to treat them with kindness.

In conversation with Michael Bond, the author of the acclaimed 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.

1. For more on human exceptionalism, see the following posts:

M. Bekoff. Humans and Elephants: We’re Not So Exceptional After All. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animal-emotions/202502/humans-a…

M. Bekoff. Sub-Human? The Psychology of Anthropocentric Exceptionalism. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animal-emotions/202407/sub-huma…

M. Bekoff. Clever Dogs, Happy Cats, and Myths of Human Exceptionalism. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animal-emotions/202206/clever-d…

M. Bekoff. How to Be Animal: The Case Against Human Exceptionalism. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animal-emotions/202104/how-be-a…

M. Bekoff. Animal Minds and the Foible of Human Exceptionalism. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animal-emotions/201107/animal-m…

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