Marc Bekoff Research Articles

Gal Gangs, Worm Lessons, and Elephant Bones

Scientists today believe that many nonhuman animals possess emotions. Additionally, they find that emotions are not limited to mammals, but that birds, reptiles, and fish also have feelings. Studying animal emotions may be the key to understanding creatures’ relationships with each other. In particular, what relationships do animals form when living in small groups? Ethologists observing animals in their natural habitats reveal many answers. First, animals in small groups employ a variety of leadership styles. Second, family relationships between parents and offspring, brother and sister, and elders and adolescents help the group survive and thrive. Third, when animals lose a member of their group, they appear to grieve in ways synonymous to humans. As they examine these relationships, animal behaviorists, including famed ethologist Marc Bekoff, help us dive deeper into the lives of animal communities so we can live with them in harmony with them.

Post-human pooches

What would happen to dogs in a world without people, wonder bioethicist Jessica Pierce and behavioural ecologist Marc Bekoff

Das Handeln der Tiere. Tierliche Agency im Fokus der Human-Animal Studies ed. by Sven Wirth, et al

Reviewed by: Das Handeln der Tiere. Tierliche Agency im Fokus der Human-Animal Studies ed. by Sven Wirth, et al Caroline Schaumann Das Handeln der Tiere. Tierliche Agency im Fokus der Human-Animal Studies. Edited by Sven Wirth, Anett Laue, Markus Kurth, Katharina Dornenzweig, Leonie Bossert, and Karsten Balgar. Bielefeld: transcript, 2016. Pp. 269.Paper €29.99. ISBN 978-3837632262. For the first text in German on the topic of animal agency, Das Handeln der Tiere, published by the Berlin-based working group Chimaira, expectations come as high as they are wide-ranging. As one can see from the proliferating number of publications on human-animal studies by Chimaira and others since 2011, this is a new but rapidly expanding field, crossing boundaries of history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, biology, literature, creative arts, and cultural studies. While pioneering work has been done mostly on human-animal relationships, such as ethical concerns in the context of food studies, other areas remain untouched. All the more welcome then is this contribution to the field along with the other work of the Chimaira group, two new professorships in human-animal studies in Germany, an extensive and up-to-date website (http://www.human-animal-studies.de), and several academic lectures and seminars on the topic. With its jargon-free and precise language, definition of multifarious terms and concepts such as "animal," "agency," or "new materialism," and summary of existing theories and research, Das Handeln der Tiere offers a much-needed introduction while simultaneously driving the field forward with its multifaceted investigations. The introduction examines concepts of subjectivity from Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Hume, and Kant in order to delineate the Cartesian subject of the Enlightenment emerging from a dismissal of God's omnipotence and a clear demarcation between the sensual and the rational. Accordingly, this model traditionally insists on a strict separation between human and animal, assigning agency to humans alone. Newer definitions however, including the book at hand, have repeatedly shifted the boundaries between humans and animals, if not questioned them altogether. The first part of this volume explores theoretical concepts of animal agency from a historical, philosophical, ethical, and sociological perspective, whereas the second part reflects on concrete instances of animal cooperation, resistance, and interaction that can be conceptualized as nonhuman agency. Taking into consideration linguistic competence, moral consciousness, willed and unwilled actions, consequences, and economic developments, Mieke Roscher offers a helpful introduction to the historical development of the concept agency and competing contemporary theories such as relational agency, embodied agency, animal agency, and entangled agency. Dominik Ohren complements this groundwork by delineating a postanthropocentric ontology of the body through a more focused exploration of concepts such as autonomy, receptivity, vulnerability, and transcorporeality by Jean-Luc Nancy, Derrida, Judith Butler, and Stacy Alaimo. Accordingly, [End Page 712] these essays present pressing questions of current research, providing an overview of existing theories and secondary literature. The additional essays continue in this vein, with Leonie Bossert juxtaposing concepts of moral agency in Marc Bekoff's and Jessica Pierce's Wild Justice (2009) and Mark Rowlands's Can Animals be Moral (2012), and Sven Wirth discussing Donna Haraway's notion of animal rights and ethics as well as the controversy it sparked. While these well-researched contributions do not shy away from critically evaluating existing work, they tend to rehearse research rather than develop new concepts. Most of the theories mentioned come from the Anglophone context, forcing contributors to rely on either awkward translation into German or the heavy use of English terms, which both can make the reading process a bit tedious. An exception here is Karsten Balgar's essay that, on the basis of theories by Merleau-Ponty and Husserl, stakes out new ground defining animal embodiment. The book's second part provides some specific examples that help ground the theoretical claims. Katharina Dornenzweig's essay on language experiments with primates stands out as a particularly valuable piece of scholarship: Dornenzweig cites theories of language competence from Aristotle to Kant, Heidegger, and contemporary philosophers, before critically evaluating language experiments with apes beginning in the 1970s. In what Dornenzweig calls a "new anthropocentrism," humans are seen not only as part of nature, but as the...

“The Simple Magic of Life”

This paper explores the important contribution phenomenology can make to animal ethics. The underlying assumption is that animal ethics is as strong as the conception of animal ontology it takes for granted. I contend that Peter Singer’s reductive ontology of animals as suffering beings leads him astray not least because it prevents him from opposing killing animals as a matter of principle. Other leading ethicists such as Martha Nussbaum and Tom Regan offer more nuanced accounts of animal ontology and correspondingly richer theories of justice and rights, but they do not go far enough. Nussbaum even contradicts her own theory of capabilities by also refusing to refuse killing. Marc Bekoff, Jonathan Balcombe, and other ethologists, on the other hand, do a marvellous job of filling in the gaps in our understanding of the complexity of animals’ emotional, social, and moral lives. Not surprisingly, as a result of their insights into animal ontology, they categorically reject killing animals and advocate for the total transformation of their conditions of existence. Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of embodiment, I suggest here offers another crucial inroad into a more meaningful and robust animal ethics by illuminating the complex perceptual dimensions of animal subjectivity.

Promoting predators and compassionate conservation.

Arian D. Wallach,∗†‡ ¶ Marc Bekoff,‡§ Michael Paul Nelson,∗∗ and Daniel Ramp‡ ∗Dingo for Biodiversity Project, P.O. Box 156, Mount Perry 4671, Queensland, Australia †Charles Darwin University, School of Environment, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia ‡Centre for Compassionate Conservation, School of the Environment, University of Technology Sydney, P.O. Box 123 Broadway, NSW, 2007, Australia §Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, U.S.A. ∗∗Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, U.S.A.

Playful fun in dogs

In this Quick guide, Marc Bekoff summarises what we know of fun and play in domestic dogs – particularly its apparent role in socialization.

Primate People: Saving Nonhuman Primates through Education, Advocacy, and Sanctuary. Edited by Lisa Kemmerer; Foreword by, Marc Bekoff. Salt Lake City (Utah): University of Utah Press. $24.95 (paper); $20.00 (e-book). xxxviii + 183 p.; ill.; index. ISBN: 978-1-60781-153-4 (pb); 978-1-60781-215-9 (eb). 2012.

<i>Primate People: Saving Nonhuman Primates through Education, Advocacy, and Sanctuary</i>. Edited by Lisa Kemmerer; Foreword by, Marc Bekoff. Salt Lake City (Utah): University of Utah Press. $24.95 (paper); $20.00 (e-book). xxxviii + 183 p.; ill.; index. ISBN: 978-1-60781-153-4 (pb); 978-1-60781-215-9 (eb). 2012.

Erratum to: Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce: Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals

Erratum to: Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce: Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals

Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce: Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals

Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce: Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals

Do Animals Have Religion? Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Religion and Embodiment

ABSTRACTThe field of religious studies has recently begun to explore a number of aspects of the relationship between animals and religion. The bulk of these explorations have been focused on reconsidering human ethical relationships with animals in light of religious values or exploring the textual and ritual meanings of animal bodies against the background of human religions. Another line of inquiry, the topic of this paper, looks at the religious experiences of animals themselves, and draws these questions into methodological conversations within the study of religion generally. This paper surveys a variety of approaches to animal religion from two disciplinary perspectives: comparative religion and cognitive ethology. From comparative religion, building on the work of Kimberley Patton, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Creek, Cherokee, Christian, and Islamic understandings of the religious lives of animals are explored in turn. From cognitive ethology, two approaches are developed: a cross-species look at animal responses to death, building on the work of Marc Bekoff, and a specific look at religious practices within the order Primates. Ultimately, the paper concludes, the study of animal religion must proceed by thinking along two lines of recurring themes found throughout these accounts: the differences between animal bodies (what Jacques Derrida calls the “heterogeneous multiplicity” of animals) and the orientation of religious bodies to affect. Rather than thinking of religion as one thing, we must conceive of religion as multiple, corresponding to the multiplicity of embodied lifeways found among animals. And rather than thinking of religion as inextricable from belief, we must begin to explore the emotional patterns that make up religion among animals—human and nonhuman. These thematic anchors of animal religion have direct implications for the study of religion itself, especially in light of what Manuel Vásquez has called the “materialist shift” in religious studies.

A Kid's Guide to Protecting and Caring for Animals by Kaye, Cathryn Berger

Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 22 No. 2 (Winter 2012) ISSN: 1546-2250 A Kid's Guide to Protecting and Caring for Animals Kaye, Cathryn Berger (2008). Minneapolis: Free Spirit Publishing; 45 pages. $6.95. ISBN 0781575423036. A Kid's Guide to Protecting and Caring for Animals is a mustread for kids, teachers, and other adults around the world.Cathryn Berger Kaye's service-learning book contains just what is needed to get kids to care about animals and their habitats. Topics covered include animal welfare, how to prevent cruelty to animals, what needs to be done to preserve habitats, a list of valuable resources, and when and how to take action. It's hard to believe how much information is contained in the 44 pages of this book. It has four sections, called stages. Stage 1: “Preparation,” includes information about why animals are important, how animals help us, historical aspects of human-animal relationships, and how to care for animals in disasters. Stage 2: “Action,” considers how to develop programs geared to one's community and the important issues at hand. Stage 3: “Reflection,” asks students to reflect on what they did. Stage 4: “Demonstration,” helps kids learn how to share with others what they've done and learned about animal welfare. This wonderful book begins with a series of quotations by kids who clearly care about other animals and the Earth.i Dakota, age 13, writes, “I’ve loved animals since I was two, and I'm glad to help animals in need of food and shelter. If it was you, wouldn't you want food and shelter?” Ezra, age 12, writes, “If we don't help them, I don't know who will.” This book is a perfect antidote to what I like to call “animaldeficit disorder.” Indeed, A Kid's Guide to Protecting and Caring for Animals will also be useful for overcoming nature- 307 deficit disorder by connecting, or in some cases, reconnecting, kids with nature. I’ve been fortunate to teach and have mutually beneficial discussions about animals with young students all over the world. We consider such topics as animal behavior, ecology, conservation biology, and the nature of human-animal interactions. I am always astounded by the level of discussion and the deep care that kids have for other animals. As a result of these projects, kids also can learn and develop other skills. Consider what Malith, age 15, writes at the beginning of A Kid's Guide: “During the course of our project I discovered that I was a pretty good photographer. I knew that this would be an interesting project, but I didn’t anticipate discovering a new passion.” I really enjoyed this book and will use it in kids’ events around the world and share it widely. It is an outstanding servicelearning book and is extremely timely as more and more kids and youth are spending less time with other animals and out in nature and more time in front of computer screens. This book “is designed to open minds, create possibilities, and encourage the lasting benefits that occur when making a contribution of one's personal talents and skills,” and it does this and more. Congratulations to Cathryn Berger Kaye for producing an outstanding book. Endnote i. Readers of A Kid’s Guide to Protecting and Caring for Animals may also be interested in: Kids and Animals:Drawings from the Hands and Hearts of Children and Youth(2011). Written by Marc Bekoff, Jane Goodall (forward),Sydney Tanner (book design), Kendall Frost (book design), and Louise Chawla (editor). Reviewer Information Marc Bekoff ...

Considering animals: contemporary studies in human-animal relations

Considering Animals draws on the expertise of scholars trained in the biological sciences, humanities, and social sciences to investigate the complex and contradictory relationships humans have with nonhuman animals. Taking their cue from the specific moments that punctuate these interactions, the essays engage with contemporary issues and debates central to human-animal studies: the representation of animals, the practical and ethical issues inseparable from human interactions with other species, and, perhaps most challengingly, the compelling evidence that animals are themselves considering beings. Case studies focus on issues such as animal emotion and human sentimentality; the representation of animals in contemporary art and in recent films such as March of the Penguins, Happy Feet, and Grizzly Man; animals' experiences in catastrophic events such as Hurricane Katrina and the SARS outbreak; and the danger of overvaluing the role humans play in the earth's ecosystems. From Marc Bekoff's moving preface through to the last essay, Considering Animals foregrounds the frequent, sometimes uncanny, exchanges with other species that disturb our self-contained existences and bring into focus our troubled relationships with them. Written in an accessible and jargon-free style, this collection demonstrates that, in the face of species extinction and environmental destruction, the roles and fates of animals are too important to be left to any one academic discipline.

Considering Animals in Emergency Response Leslie Irvine, Filling the Ark: Animal Welfare in Disasters. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009. 176 pages. [Part of the Animals and Ethics series, Ed. Marc Bekoff.

Considering Animals in Emergency Response Leslie Irvine, Filling the Ark: Animal Welfare in Disasters. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009. 176 pages. [Part of the Animals and Ethics series, Ed. Marc Bekoff.

ARE ANIMALS MORAL? A THEOLOGICAL APPRAISAL OF THE EVOLUTION OF VICE AND VIRTUE

Abstract.I discuss controversial claims about the status of non‐human animals as moral beings in relation to philosophical claims to the contrary. I address questions about the ontology of animals rather than ethical approaches as to how humans need to treat other animals through notions of, for example, animal rights. I explore the evolutionary origins of behavior that can be considered vices or virtues and suggest that Thomas Aquinas is closer to Darwin's view on nonhuman animals than we might suppose. An appreciation of the complexity of the emotional lives of social animals and their cooperative behaviors in light of the work of animal ethologists such as Frans de Waal and Marc Bekoff suggests that social animals can be considered moral in their own terms. I discuss the charge of anthropomorphism, drawing on the work of archaeologist Steven Mithen, and consider arguments for the evolution of conscience in the work of anthropologist Christopher Boehm. Only the biological basis for the development of conscience and religion has evolved in nonhuman animals, and this should not be confused with sophisticated moral systems of analysis or particular religious beliefs found in the human community.

Who's That Swine?

![Figure][1] Miss Piggy has mirror smarts. CREDIT: REDFERN/GETTY IMAGES Pigs belong to the elite group of animals that can use mirrors, researchers say. “We knew that pigs have sophisticated social behaviors,” says zoologist Donald Broom of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, so he and colleagues decided to test their mirror awareness. First, they left eight pigs, in pairs, with a mirror for 5 hours. “They initially interpret the image as another pig,” says Broom—the error most species make. But then they began to recognize the reflections of their own movements. Proof of their mirror smarts came in the next test: The researchers hid a bowl of food behind a barrier so that it could be seen only in the mirror. An overhead fan circulated the food's scent so that the pigs could not simply use their noses. In less than 25 seconds, seven of the pigs correctly interpreted the image, turned away from the mirror, and ran to the bowl. The eighth pig flunked the test, looking behind the mirror for the food. The experiments show that pigs can make sense of mirror images and have some degree of self-awareness, the researchers report in the current issue of Animal Behavior. The findings are “very significant,” says Marc Bekoff, a cognitive ethologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and “extend the range of animals who are self-aware.” That includes elephants, dolphins, magpies, gray parrots, and some primates. [1]: pending:yes

Wild justice: the moral lives of animals

Scientists have long counseled against interpreting animal behavior in terms of human emotions, warning that such anthropomorphizing limits our ability to understand animals as they really are. With Wild Justice, Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce unequivocally challenge this long-held view. Marrying years of behavioral and cognitive research with compelling and moving anecdotes, Bekoff and Pierce reveal that animals exhibit a broad repertoire of moral behaviors, including fairness, empathy, trust, and reciprocity. Animals, in short, are incredibly adept social beings, relying on rules of conduct to navigate intricate social networks that are essential to their survival. Ultimately, Bekoff and Pierce draw the astonishing conclusion that there is no moral gap between humans and other species: morality is an evolved trait that we unquestionably share with other social mammals.

A bile business

Thousands of bears are being kept in appalling conditions to supply traditional Chinese medicine. Thankfully, there's a plan to save them, says Marc Bekoff

Encyclopedia of human-animal relationships: a global exploration of our connections with animals

Humans and animals live together on earth, but as we increasingly reshape ecosystems to accommodate larger populations, technology, and increased consumption, animals are greatly affected. The history of civilization shows that humans have used animals for food, clothing, transportation, making a living, and even companionship, as well as subjects for the arts, literature, and within religious beliefs. Renowned animal behaviorist Marc Bekoff and 300 experts from around the globe provide more than 350 essays that discuss such topics as animals and ecology; animals and global warming; animals as food; animals as pets; animals and diseases; animals in research and in education; animals providing assistance; and the influence of animals in art, religion and philosophy, literature, music, dance, and entertainment. Students and all those wanting a better understanding of the reciprocal connections and interdependence of organisms on the planet will benefit from this fascinating and instructive reference work. Bekoff and contributors ranging from scientists and researchers in other disciplines to teachers, writers, and artists along with those who work with animals in service, rescue, and training have provided engaging and thought-provoking entries ranging in length from 500 to more than 5,000 words. Each entry in the encyclopedia ends with recommended further resources, which may include books, articles, Web sites, and videos. The volumes are illustrated with photographs, drawings, charts, and tables. An extensive bibliography, comprehensive index, and classified lists of entries provide extensive access to the contents of the encyclopedia.

Too stressed to work

Scientists must provide lab animals with decent living conditions or accept that their results could be useless, say Ann Baldwin and Marc Bekoff

Are you feeling what I'm feeling?

If you doubt that non-human animals have emotions, just look at them, listen to them and inhale the odours that pour out when they interact with friend or foe. I believe that what you see on the outside speaks volumes about what is happening inside an animal's head and heart. Not long ago, the notion that animals have emotions was considered subversive, but opinion is changing. In recent years, reputable scientific journals have published research about moral dogs and chimps, joyful rats, grieving elephants, empathetic mice and fearful fish. Just watching a frolicking wolf, a whimpering dog, or a squealing piglet having his tail and testicles cut off without an anaesthetic is enough to convince me that these are emotional beings. The evidence of a single anecdote may not be very scientific, but as philosopher Dale Jamieson says, the plural of anecdote is data. What's more, anecdotes such as those I recount in this article can also inspire new research. Marc Bekoff