Animals Make Us Human by Temple Grandin

"What does an animal need to have a good life?

I don't mean a good life physically. We know a lot about what kind of food, water, exercise, and veterinary care animals need to grow well and be healthy.

I mean a good mental life.

What does an animal need to be happy?"

Dr. Grandin opens the book with these sentences and she captures the theme of her book in them.

Her main theory is that we need to take the needs of the animal in mind, and its natural habitat, to "base animal welfare programs on the core emotion systems of the brain" which will allow the animal to live in such a manner that they will be accessing their "positive emotions" much more than their "negative emotions".

Dr. Grandin has categorized what she calls Blue-Ribbon emotions, which are the core emotion systems that all animals and humans have. They are:

Seeking: "the basic impulse to search, investigate, and make sense of the environment."

Rage: The various level of frustration that is built up when an animal or person is physically or mentally restrained.

Panic: The pain that is felt when a loved one is removed from an early child, you are moved away from a group of peers that you have bounded with, and the pain felt when someone close to you passes.

Lust: Self explanatory :)

Care: Parental love and caretaking.

Play: Self explantory


Dr. Grandin shows how the behavior of animals change based on the application of these various emotions. She covers dog, cats, cows, horses, pigs, chicken, and others and shows us why animals act the way they do and what we can do to help increase their mental life so they can live happier and more healthy lives.

I'm certain that anyone reading this book with develop a deeper understanding of animals that hopefully translates and understanding of the nature of the animals in your life. This understand will hopefully manifest into making the animals in your own life happier and healthier.

A want to close by quoting a section of the book titled Making Real Change to Improve Animal Conditions (page 254-257):

"...the Humane Society in the 1970s used to send representatives to sit in on board meetings of the major livestock associations. That gave the Humane Society direct knowledge of how the livestock industry worked and what they they could change and still stay in business.

In the 1980s the Humane Society of the United States donated money to fund the development of my center-track restrainer system for meat plants. They would never do that today. Few animal welfare groups would fund something to help reform and improve the livestock industry. As people have become more abstracified they've become more radical, and today the relationship between animal advocacy groups and the livestock industry is totally adversarial.

You see this at every level. Recently I went to a college that has a program on animals and public policy. The only publications they had in their library were animal advocacy magazines. I said, "Look, I think you need to subscribe to Feedstuffs, Beef, Meat and Poultry, and National Hog Farmer. You need to get the magazines read by the industry." To make policy that will work you need information on every side of the issue.[I make this sentence bold, it's important!!]"