Brandon Keim / W. W. Norton & Company / 368 pages
Meet the Neighbors: Animal Minds and Life in a More-than-Human World is an exploration of animal cognition, intelligence, and social systems, challenging the often-arbitrary line that separates humans from animals. Readers are invited into a well-balanced discussion of how we can better understand and coexist with our animal neighbors.
Using a combination of scientific studies, historical documents, philosophical papers, and rich anecdotes, author Brandon Keim demonstrates how our attitudes toward animals have been shaped by harmful rhetoric and excessively clinical language. In fact, animals experience friendship, romance, pain, grief, and countless other states widely believed to be unique to humans (e.g., geese mourn their partners, honeybees engage in deliberative democracy, and rats reflect on the past). Keim makes it clear that these are more than just fun facts; by deepening our knowledge of animals’ interior lives, we can better understand our responsibilities to them. The author asks: Should we only reduce suffering inflicted by humans, or try to bioengineer nature itself into a kinder home for animals? Are we justified in culling nonnative species when their impact on ecology is murky?
Keim observes that animals are paying the price for climate change, urbanization, consumerism, and other aspects of our changing world, and implores animal advocates and traditional conservationists to find common ground in seeking solutions. Although this field of research is still relatively young, the author supports taking these “insights out of scientific journals and into our everyday world.”