Reviews for Being With Animals: Why We Are Obsessed with the Furry, Scaly, Feathered Creatures Who Populate Our World

The average rating for Being With Animals: Why We Are Obsessed with the Furry, Scaly, Feathered Creatures Who Populate Our World based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-06-10 00:00:00 Hidber Nicolas Yesterday anthropologist Barbara J. King appeared on CBS Sunday Morning as part of a segment discussing unlikely animal friendships. (For example, Tarra, the elephant, and her BFF Bella, the dog.) As luck would have it, I'd just finished her book Being with Animals which explores how humans and animals have co-evolved to the point where that relationship defines us. "Part of the reason we, today, are so attracted and attuned to animals is that we are locked together, as we have always been locked together, in a shared journey that spans past, present and future," King writes. In this well-researched and well-written exploration of what it means to be with animals, King takes us from prehistoric man's cave drawings of rhinoceros and zebras to present day findings of Kanzi, the bonobo, who not only can put together simple sentences using a picture board, but can understand the spoken word and a dog named Jaytee who can predict when his owner is coming home. She starts in Chauvet Cave in southern France, discovered in 1994, which contains paintings dating from 30,000 B.C., some of the oldest known in the world. (All of which are much better than my recent still life.) According to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, "From the archaeological record, it is clear that these animals were rarely hunted; the images are thus not simple depictions of daily life at the time they were made." In other words, the cave drawings are art as a means to generate emotion. But why? King asks, "Why did people paint animals in such overwhelming abundance, yet choose to record their own images hardly at all?" The animals in the drawings are "symbolizing something more." Were they revered and worshiped? Were they used in religious-type ceremonies? We can theorize, but may never know for sure. King weaves research, stories and examples to illustrate her points on animal empathy, defining animal intelligence, and the spiritual lives of animals in a lively and thought-provoking manner. She doesn't shy away from a loaded question people have been asking probably since those artists drew in Chauvet Cave: do animals have souls? Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas have offered their own ideas on the subject. Modern day theories abound from author Jon Katz to biologist Marc Beckoff to primatologist Jane Goodall to minister Gary Kowalski to behaviorist Temple Grandin. To her credit, King doesn't attempt to answer the question (how to answer the unanswerable?), but offers opinions from the world's spiritual leaders. You all know that I'm on board with any author who references the Transcendentalists, Thoreau, Emerson and Whitman. That's all to say that the biggest takeaway from Being with Animals is that animals are individuals. King notes that their behavior is not hard-wired and often depends on experiences. It's a great message to send to readers - to accept each animal on its own terms. Perhaps, she believes, humans can learn to treat each other as individuals by having compassionate interactions with animals…and that can "unlock our compassion, our best selves."

Review # 2 was written on 2011-01-19 00:00:00 Tom Eaton Although this is a book that deals with people, animals and mainstream spirituality, I enjoyed most what I suppose would be called the new age-y aspects to this. The author, Dr. King, does refer to "new age woo-woo," warns against greedy neo-shamans and won't get mixed up in anything to do with psychic pets. However, it is in the chapter titled "Dog and Cat (and Buffalo) Mysteries" that this interesting book about the human-animal bond especially comes to life. The skeptical Dr. King entertains the notion that perhaps pets can be telepathic, citing Rupert Sheldrake's (a scientist with a PhD in biochemistry from Cambridge University in England) theories on morphic fields. There does appear to be both anecdotal and documented evidence of pets seeming to be aware of when their owners will be arriving home. Dr. King handles this respectfully and allows the reader to draw his or her own conclusions. I loved the chapter titled "Ravens, Shamans, and Dogs Who Dream." I could easily gobble up an entire book devoted to subjects such as the reindeer people of Northern Siberia: "Eveny people dream about reindeer, and use the dreams' content to make sense of issues and problems in their lives, sometimes in retrospect. It's not that the reindeer offer solutions themselves; these dreams feature no cartoonish talking animals. Rather, people need to pay keen attention to how animals act, both in their waking and dreaming lives." Further along in the chapter, it is described how the Runa people of Ecuador perform ceremonies on dogs - including giving them hallucinogens -- to make them understand human speech. Being with Animals traces the history of peaceful - and not-so-peaceful -- cohabitation of people and animals from archeological evidence of cave art to speculation about the future. With numerous examples from the animal kingdom, and some mythical creatures such as unicorns, the spiritual bond between animal and human is affirmed in this thoughtful exploration. Recommended.