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Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed: The Fascinating Science of Animal Intelligence, Emotions, Friendship, and Conservation Paperback – November 5, 2013

by Ph.D. Marc Bekoff (Author)

3.7 62 ratings

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In 2009, Marc Bekoff was asked to write on animal emotions for Psychology Today. Some 500 popular, jargon-free essays later, the field of anthrozoology — the study of human-animal relationships — has grown exponentially, as have scientific data showing how smart and emotional nonhuman animals are. Here Bekoff offers selected essays that showcase the fascinating cognitive abilities of other animals as well as their empathy, compassion, grief, humor, joy, and love. Humpback whales protect gray whales from orca attacks, combat dogs and other animals suffer from PTSD, and chickens, rats, and mice display empathy. This collection is both an updated sequel to Bekoff ’s popular book The Emotional Lives of Animals and a call to begin the important work of rewilding” ourselves and changing the way we treat other animals.

Print length

400 pages
Language

English
Publisher

New World Library
Publication date

November 5, 2013
Dimensions

5.5 x 1 x 8.25 inches
ISBN-10

1608682196
ISBN-13

978-1608682195
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Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Renowned animal analyst Bekoff has been writing a blog about animal emotions for Psychology Today since 2009. In this collection of posts, he encourages humans to see animals, from horses to jellyfish, as emotional and intellectual equals, not as inferiors to be dominated. Some chapters focus on the science of animal cognition, some on human-animal interactions, and others on animal expression and emotion. The most poignant pieces consider the implications of such a major shift in human thought and behavior. For example, if we know that bees get depressed and feel both sorrow and joy, can we really go on treating them with such callous disregard? This important question is one Bekoff pushes his readers to ask in every essay. This thoughtful book is a great resource for everyone who has a passion for understanding and protecting the animal kingdom. Bekoff’s unbiased diction and clear examples will provide even the most human-centric skeptics with a scientific learning experience. --Amber Peckham

Review

Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed (as the title implies) is a top scientist’s brilliantly eccentric and eclectic look at what we know about animal intelligence, emotions, and behavior. The scope is encyclopedic, the subject inspired, the style personal, and the tone impassioned. Read this book for pleasure and inspiration; keep it for information.”
Dale Peterson, author of Giraffe Reflections, The Moral Lives of Animals, and Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man

A unique, witty, and thoroughly researched collection of essays, Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed is an entertaining and informative read for the general public and experts alike. Marc Bekoff’s breadth of knowledge about animal behavior is staggering. Bravo to Bekoff for making it so enjoyable to learn about the cognitive, emotional, and moral lives of the animals with whom we share our homes and our magnificent planet.”
Brian Hare, PhD, and Vanessa Woods, New York Times bestselling authors of The Genius of Dogs

A thoughtful and illuminating collection of essays about the animal mind — certain to provoke discussion about our relationship with our fellow animals.”
— Virginia Morell, author of Animal Wise: How We Know Animals Think and Feel

Marc Bekoff’s wide-ranging books are unfailingly scholarly, entertaining, insightful, and educational.”
— Ingrid E. Newkirk, president of PETA

Dr. Marc Bekoff has, in his characteristically brilliant, accessible, eclectic, and compassionate style, rendered unequivocally clear nothing less than an animal protection manifesto that is likely to resonate for years.”
— Michael Charles Tobias, PhD, president of the Dancing Star Foundation

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ New World Library (November 5, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1608682196
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1608682195
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.05 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1 x 8.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,850,972 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,062 in Animal & Pet Care Essays
- #2,057 in Biology of Wildlife
- #3,328 in Zoology (Books)

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3.7 62 ratings

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Marc Bekoff

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Marc Bekoff, author of The Emotional Lives of Animals, is professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a former Guggenheim fellow. He has published more than a thousand scientific and popular essays and thirty books. He lives in Boulder.

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George Wuerthner

Excellent reading

Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2013

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Mark Bekoff's book Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed is full of fascinating and compassionate insights to animals. An animal behaviorist, Mark brings a scientific inquiry and mind mixed with humor and whit to reflecting on what animals do what they do. The articles are a collection of short essays he's published so the book leads itself to reading in bits and pieces. You don't have to read it end to end, though there is no reason not to. However, you can carry it to the bus stop and browse a chapter or two or read a couple of essays before you go to bed. Anyone who has ever had a relationship with their pets or loved wild animals will find this book inspirational and enjoyable.

8 people found this helpful

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J. Harris

No Fascinating Science Here

Reviewed in the United States on November 12, 2014

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This book was a huge disappointment. It's really an illustration of why blog posts should not become books. I have a degree in zoology, and one of my favorite topics is animal behavior. From the title and the flyleaf, I had the impression that I would have the opportunity to read fascinating science. What I got instead was the intro to the fascinating science and then Bekoff's conclusions regarding the fascinating science. But no fascinating science. So disappointing.

Just a couple of observations:

In many of his essays, Bekoff comes across as smug, arrogant and dismissive of those who disagree with him. He regularly cites his own essays in other essays. There was even an essay where he talked about a colleague who had a book idea. He shared how he let the guy down easily by explaining that he had already written a book on that very topic, but followed up by encouraging him to continue because there was always room for another point of view.

The writing was choppy and cumbersome. He insists on describing humans as "human animals" and other animals as "non-human animals". He also refers to his dog his "companion dog". While I agree, dogs are companionable animals, it makes for clunky writing. Also, I am accustomed to thinking of a "companion dog" as a highly trained individual who does complicated things for humans who need assistance.

The format is the same for every essay. There is an idea presented, there is a vague reference to some study or other, then there is a "what we should do now" section which invariably carries a strong note of self-righteousness. It's overbearing and ultimately a turn-off.

There are many ideological pretzels. Bekoff is firmly in the "animals are people too" camp, writing essay after essay on the topic of "speciesism" and how human animals should not consider themselves to be a higher order animal than non-human animals. I don't really see how this works, especially from an evolutionist standpoint. The entire point of evolution is to, you know, evolve.

My favorite pretzel was the contrast between the story of the child who fell into the African painted dog exhibit and was killed by the dogs and the story of the child who fell into the chimpanzee enclosure and was rescued by a female chimpanzee and returned to the human animals. In the first case, Bekoff deplores the idea that the dogs should be put down. He says the dogs were just following their instincts. Just doing what they do. They can't be blamed for being themselves. In the second case, Bekoff lauds the empathy and compassion of the female chimpanzee. Do not, however, make the mistake of assuming chimpanzees to be a higher order non-human animal than the African painted dogs. Speciesism!

There is deep inconsistency in the Darwinian idea that all animals, human and non-human, are following a biological imperative, and then claiming that humans, while part of that evolutionary chain, are not a higher animal. At the same time, humans are somehow required to be more empathetic, responsible, caring and just better. That said, if we are just doing what we do, can we really be blamed for it? Either we are a higher order and we are responsible, or we are not.

I really like (non-human) animals. I've had companion dogs and companion cats, and even a companion rat or two. Even on their best days, they can't be compared to my companion children. Not in communication skills, developmental ability or future potential. I absolutely believe that human (animals) have a responsibility to care for our world and the animals in it, not because we are equal, but because we are a higher order animal.

Recommended if you are a vegetarian/vegan animal rights activist with a lower than average interest in fascinating science.

5 people found this helpful

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Phil Zarrow

For Animal Lovers

Reviewed in the United States on June 17, 2014

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Don't let the title mis-lead you - the book is not so much about peculiarities of animals but the peculiarities and cruelties of humans who don't understand and see animals as beneath humankind. This book is written by a psychologist who is an animal lover and believes in egalitarianism with regard to all animals (including humans) on our earth. And very compelling.

8 people found this helpful

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Nancy Taylor

A Mix of Sadness and Happyness

Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2014

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Marc Beckoff is very graphic about how some animals are treated. It shocked and saddened me that such abuse can take place in our world. We're all part of the animal world. His explaining about non-human animals amused me, as do people to are speaking about police partners with four feet and call them K-9 dogs....Uh...Yah! I've had a chance to play with a dolphin in the wild and it was a thrill of my life. This fella did several of the "Stupid Sea World" tricks, splashed me with his tail and seemed to pause and wait for me to do something to entertain him. Clearly he was just having fun. This book gave me lots to think about, and wish that I could do more to help the cause. The sadness part is I feel really guilty that lobster and prime rib taste soooo good.

4 people found this helpful

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Mick McAllister

Pious, self-effacing righteousness

Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2014

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I have 50 pages to go, and I've come back to downgrade this book from three stars to two. By the time I finish, I may want to drop that rating (done, now that I'm done). The farther I get into this collection of essays, the more Bekoff's self-effacing smugness grates. The section on "Who you eat" degenerates into smarmy righteousness worthy of a wounded Uriah Heep. In the final essay, Bekoff tellingly remarks that when he needs inspiration, he reads one of his own essays. SIgh. I am profoundly disappointed. On the whole, I've decided Marian Dawkins was right, and I'm about to read her book (Why Animals Matter) to cleanse my palate. [A final note: I read Dakwins, and Bekoff's review -- and re-review -- misrepresent her maliciously.]

That said, here's the review. Animal lovers and compassionate conservationists, ding away.
================================

I am a fan of Marc Bekoff's books because they combine rigorous science with compassionate sentiment. This, however, is not the best place to encounter his writing. Start with Animals Matter, The Emotional Lives of Animals, or Minding Animals, where the science reins in the sentiment a bit. This book is a compilation of blogs from Psychology Today and it is marred by two almost inevitable problems.

First, it is not very well written. No surprise, really, because producing a blog does not leave one a lot of time for reflection and revision. It offers a superficial perspective, partially because it is "written down" to the Psychology Today audience. For those of us who have been studying, however amateurishly, animal cognition and animal welfare, a good deal of the book leaves us muttering, "Yeah, yeah, get on with it."

Much worse, though: There is far too much assertion from authority and too little hard evidence... again, understandable in the high-speed environment of a blog but deadly if you mean to persuade rather than inform. A classic example is Bekoff's much reprinted review of Marian Dawkins' Why Animals Matter. To hear him tell it, the book is another behaviorist screed with nothing to say worth reading. His attitude is understandable, since Dawkins calls him out, personally and with some exaggeration, as a "dangerous" anthropomorphizer making unsubstantiated claims about animal consciousness. Her attack on him is silly and clumsy, and it's a bit of a shock to learn that she said in an interview before the book was published, "Mark is not going to like me after he reads this." Well, duh. Bekoff not only "didn't like it," he just as grossly misrepresented her views while bashing them (the review is in the book). Significantly, his review makes no attempt to explain how a demon like Dawkins could have anything to say in favor of animal welfare or rights. The truth is not as black or white as Bekoff makes it sound. Dawkins' audience is people who don't think animals matter, not Bekoff's choir.

Oftentimes, the evidence problem takes the form of Bekoff telling us that research has demonstrated some conclusion, and then rushing into his "Here's what we should do" (which is essentially the same in each essay). What he skips, with frustrating regularity, is "the story." So research has shown that reptiles play. What research? What did they test, and what did they find? Bekoff ends up in the ironically authoritarian position of saying, "Just take my word for and act accordingly." I'm on his side, but even I won't buy that. He also routinely cites his own blog essays as sources for more information, but in a book we can actually test that citation, and generally the cited essay has no more evidence in it than the later one.

In the haste of blog writing, Bekoff takes some sentimental shortcuts that leave himself vulnerable to Dawkins' criticism. He asserts at one point that being Utilitarians, "animal welfare people" believe it's Ok to exploit animals "for the greater good." This is a ridiculous rhetorical reduction of Utilitarianism. Ironically, the most rigorous Utilitarian experts in animal welfare, Bernie Rollin and Temple Grandin, are just up the road from Bekoff's CU headquarters, where they teach at CSU. To dismiss either of them as "ok with exploiting animals" is, if I understand Bernie Rollin very well, "fightin' words," not worthy of a respectful and open-minded scientist. Too often, Bekoff makes appeals that are simply nonsense from an objective point of view, such as his silly notion that, as one essay concludes, "animals truly care if they are confronting a welfarist or a rightist" and his various reports of "what animals want." What ridiculous, inane anthropomorphizing.

Finally, the book is poorly organized. The first two sections are much more suitably the concluding essays, and the essays with some real, observed meat and bone are deeper into the book, past where the non-believer would have quit reading. Too often, the essays (most of them only a page or two long) end with a repeated, hortatory paragraph about how we SHOULD treat animals, effectively abandoning the topic to make his main pitch. That might work if you read one essay a week, but in a book it gets hokey pretty fast.

In a word, Bekoff sells himself short and doing so, he does a disservice to the cause of animal welfare. Note the irony there: He exhibits the very problem Dawkins, however crudely, accused him of.

19 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

EcoVeganLady

Refreshingly insightful and inspiring!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 6, 2018

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A truly fantastic book that shares scientific and moral insight into the necessary changes to our attitudes that we need to take to help save our planet and the species we share it with. A truly refreshing perspective, it was a real joy reading a book written by a professor who's views and morals align so closely with my own. If you care about animals, this book is a must read!

m hunter

Overly Preachy.

Reviewed in Canada on July 11, 2014

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Not as good as his other books, I really like The Emotional Lives of Animals, and Wild Justice,but this book is really just a series of blog posts, and comes off as really preachy. While his other books are full on interesting facts,and experements this book has a lot of his personal views which I find take away from the book. One example he criticises Cesar Millan for "choking" a dog that he is trying to train, and Bekoff states that he would call the police and that we should teach dogs instead of train them because it could ruin there hearts and lives. And a lot of talk about being a vegan.

One person found this helpful

DaleMc

Another one for the recommended reading list

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 3, 2014

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A must for anyone with an interest in animals, written in such a way that the reader can engage quickly with the subject matter. I highly recommend this book and am confident that every reader will definitely learn more about animals, and appreciate them even more.
Marc Bekoff's books are always thought provoking and informative and this collection of short essays is another one that I will be recommending to others.

7 people found this helpful

Danny Shea

Great title!!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 13, 2020

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Bought for my daughter’s assignment for her Animal Behaviour course but an interesting read for anybody

Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 12, 2017

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Marc thinks as I do so I got along famously with this book and all he writes.

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