Animate

How Animals Shape the Human Mind

Michael Bond

A mind-expanding deep dive into how animals have shaped us, from the palaeolithic era to the present day.

In Animate, acclaimed science writer Michael Bond explores how animals have profoundly influenced our minds and cultures. Drawing on cutting-edge insights from psychology, anthropology, literature and neuroscience, Bond traces the varied ways their lives have affected ours, from our hunter-gatherer ancestors whose brains were rewired by the prey they hunted and the predators they feared, to the medieval and Enlightenment thinkers who used animals to promote notions of human supremacy.

Scientists today are challenging the assumption that we are separate from and superior to animals, showing that they too possess intelligence, empathy, creativity and even the ability to use tools. If everything that supposedly makes us human is shared with other creatures, where does that leave us? And if we are not as exceptional as we thought, how should we be treating the animals we live alongside?

A fascinating exploration of what it means to be both human and animal, Animate shows that to better understand ourselves, we must pay more attention to the other beings with whom we share our world.

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.

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Endorsements & Reviews

Praise for Michael Bond

"A fascinating, incisive account of how the human brain evolved to keep us orientated. Beautifully written and researched." Isabella Tree, author of Wilding

"One of the most fascinating books I have read for a long while, not least because of how it opens up so many other subjects."
The Scotsman

"In this fascinating book about our gift for what Michael Bond calls wayfinding, he makes a compelling case that our ancient abilities to get from A to B aren’t just a matter of geography."
The New Statesman

"Fascinating. Bond offers stories of phenomenal feats of navigation. Ultimately, 'we are spatial beings' and Wayfinding skilfully and at times movingly makes the case for how deeply that is true." The Sunday Times