violence

Book review – Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death

7-minute read
keywords: ethology, philosophy, psychology

The Virginia opossum is one of nature’s glorious weirdos. This North American marsupial will play dead when feeling threatened: she will fall over paralysed, eyes and mouth wide open, turn her tongue blue, drop her body temperature and heart rate, and, for good measure, drool, pee, poop, and excrete a foul-smelling green goo from her anal glands, all at the same time. “Playing” dead rather undersells it. Having just reviewed How Animals Grieve, this is the second of a two-part review exploring how animals experience and understand death, a topic studied by comparative thanatology. This young discipline sits somewhere at the intersection of ethology and comparative psychology, though associate professor Susana Monsó is instead a philosopher. With Playing Possum, she has written an exceedingly interesting book that is as accessible to a general audience as it is relevant to specialists. In the process, she convincingly argues that an understanding of death is likely very widespread in nature, but also that comparative thanatology has a whole lot of growing up to do.

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Book review – Scorched Earth: Environmental Warfare as a Crime against Humanity and Nature

7-minute read
keywords: environmental history, warfare

Whenever war breaks out, our concern is understandably first and foremost with the human casualties. The tremendous environmental toll tends to take a backseat. However, environmental destruction can and has long been an effective military strategy. In Scorched Earth, historian Emmanuel Kreike surveys four centuries of environmental warfare around the globe to show it is neither uniquely Western nor the unwanted love child of modern science and technology.

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Book review – Yellowstone Wolves: Science and Discovery in the World’s First National Park

7-minute read

The reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park is one of the best-known examples of wildlife conservation. To celebrate its 25th anniversary and summarise the many lessons learned, Yellowstone Wolf Project leaders Douglas W. Smith and Daniel R. Stahler, together with wildlife ecologist Daniel R. MacNulty, bring together research from over 70 colleagues in this large, edited collection. The combination of academic content, excellent photography, guest essays, and an online bonus documentary with interviews make this the go-to reference work for anyone wanting to go beyond the headlines on this reintroduction project.

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Book review – The European Guilds: An Economic Analysis

8-minute read

This review is a case of one book leading to another. When I read Carl Benedikt Frey’s The Technology Trap, one argument he raised as to why the Industrial Revolution arrived as late as it did, was the resistance to innovation by guilds. But beyond certain vague and probably romantic notions, what do I really know about medieval guilds? And thus I found myself sitting down with The European Guilds, a hefty 645-page book by economic historian Sheilagh Ogilvie, published in The Princeton Economic History of the Western World series. This meticulously argued book crushes the idea that guilds served the common good. Instead, argues Ogilvie, through their profiteering they held Europe in an economic stranglehold that lasted for centuries.

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Book review – The Reign of Wolf 21: The Saga of Yellowstone’s Legendary Druid Pack

7-minute read

The wolves that have been reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park are some of the most intensely monitored animals on the planet. One person, in particular, has dedicated his life to watching and studying them: biological technician and park ranger Rick McIntyre. The Reign of Wolf 21 is the second book in the Alpha Wolves of Yellowstone trilogy and chronicles the life of, arguably, Yellowstone’s most famous and loved wolf.

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Book review – Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason

6-minute read

2020. A time of Trump. Written during a period of pandemic, it is a chronicle of conspiracies embellished with the flowers of falsehoods. In other words, it is tempting to think of the current moment as one of irrationality run rampant. If you have been entertaining similar thoughts, Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason provides a poignant note and a fascinating reflection. Because, when you take some distance, you might ask if it has ever been different. How many people past have wondered the same from their unique vantage point? Have we really made any progress towards enlightenment, or is our history merely the back-and-forth sloshing of the tides of reason and unreason?

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Book review – The Rise of Wolf 8: Witnessing the Triumph of Yellowstone’s Underdog

6-minute read

The lives of animal groups can be as full of intrigue, drama, and machinations as any novel or movie starring humans. But revealing this requires extraordinary perseverance. Following their reintroduction to Yellowstone National Park, no other wolves in the world have been more closely monitored. And of all the people involved, nobody has spent more time in the field watching them than biological technician and park ranger Rick McIntyre. Amongst wolf aficionados, wolf 21—for the wolves are identified by a number—was one the most famous. But before 21, there was wolf 8, and this is his story.

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Book review – Science in Black and White: How Biology and Environment Shape Our Racial Divide

6-minute read

Some time after I reviewed Angela Saini’s book Superior, I was contacted by medical anthropologist and science writer Alondra Oubré, offering me the opportunity to review her new book. The overall aim of Science in Black and White might be the same—the debunking of the biological arguments used to justify racist thinking—but Oubré shows there is more than one approach to get there.

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Book review – Becoming Wild: How Animals Learn to be Animals

7-minute read

In his previous book, Beyond Words, ecologist Carl Safina convinced his readers of the rich inner lives of animals. Just like we do, they have thoughts, feelings, and emotions. But the similarities do not stop there. Becoming Wild focuses on animal culture, the social knowledge that is transmitted between individuals and generations through sharing and learning. The more we look, the more animals seem less different from us—or we from them. On top of that, Safina puts forward several eye-opening and previously-overlooked implications of animal culture.

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Book review – Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel

7-minute read

Recognising that animals are intelligent beings with inner lives, emotions—even personalities—has a troubled place in the history of ethology, the study of animal behaviour. For most pet owners, these things will seem self-evident, but ethologists have long been hostile to the idea of anthropomorphising animals by attributing human characteristics to them. The tide is turning, though, and on the back of decades-long careers, scientists such as Frans de Waal, Marc Bekoff, and Carl Safina have become well-known public voices breaking down this outdated taboo. In preparation of reviewing Safina’s new book Becoming Wild, I decided I should first read his bestseller Beyond Words. I have to issue an apology here: courtesy of the publisher Henry Holt I have had a review copy of this book for several years that gathered dust until now. And that was entirely my loss, as Beyond Words turned out to be a beautiful, moving book.

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