New Releases
Have you ever stared at a steak, peered at a pork chop or glanced at a goat curry and wondered about that animal? Where did it come from, and how was it raised? Did that creature think, play, dream, or have feelings? Or was it simply a mindless beast? If you've thought about these questions, then this book is the book for you.
Oh My Goat: Book available soon
Join the author on a rollicking adventure through the history of how we have viewed, judged, treated, sacrificed, mummified, deified an..well, fried..animals
Learn how animal intelligence is measured and how the animals we call food, measure up.
But be warned, you may not look at a hamburger the same way again!
Coming soon: Available as paperback or e-book on Amazon.com
Join the author on a rollicking adventure through the history of how we have viewed, judged, treated, sacrificed, mummified, deified an..well, fried..animals
Learn how animal intelligence is measured and how the animals we call food, measure up.
But be warned, you may not look at a hamburger the same way again!
Coming soon: Available as paperback or e-book on Amazon.com
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Are we now living in the "Meatropocene"?
As of 2015, wild mammals (land and marine) comprised only 4% of the Earth’s biomass. We now live in the Holocene, a geological epoch from 10,000 years to the present. Also dubbed the Anthropocene, due to the immense changes humans have made, perhaps it should be renamed the Meatropocene! |
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Do Animals show Moral Behaviour?
Animals display a distinct repertoire of behaviours that keep checks and balances between right and wrong. Cooperation ensures the group survives and thrives; cheaters and social loafers get punished, as do their kin, but you also look after your kin to pass on genes. Play is crucial in learning the rules of the social bargain, and who is at the top or bottom of the social hierarchy, and if you don’t play fairly, the game stops. Even rats enjoy play and laugh ultrasonically when tickled. Animals display emotional and cognitive empathy and have a sense of fairness. If you throw a god into this mix, you might even say it looks like a rudimentary religion, but some might say that’s barking mad. |
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Chickens are highly intelligent, curious, and social, with diverse temperaments and personalities. They can delay gratification and show the ability to recognise object permanence. Without ruffling too many feathers or counting my chickens before they hatched, this sounds like an intelligent being to me, not just a walking chicken nugget!
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The study of animal intelligence has a rich and fascinating history, albeit one tainted with pockets of unspeakable cruelty. Thankfully, we now possess a greater understanding of the intelligence of animals, their rich emotional lives, memory capabilities, self-awareness, and problem-solving abilities.
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In 2022, on average, 10 cows, 47 pigs, and 2,400 chickens were slaughtered for meat every second.
Those sobering figures highlight the rather obese elephant in the room. It is not only the meat we consume, or why we consume it, nor the questionable treatment of the animals we raise, but the sheer volume of meat we consume that is disturbing. |
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Cows
Have excellent hearing, long sandpapery tongues that can lick their own nostrils and 330-degree eyesight, with a blind spot that is best avoided. They have distinct ‘voices’ and can recognise each other’s calls and whether the caller is stressed. Cows show empathy to stressed cows, elevating their own stress levels and seeking calming friends to feel better. Cows show distinct personalities and, in all likelihood, can ‘mental time travel’, using forward thinking to solve complex tasks to get to food. They have good long-term memory, make great, if not enormous, pets or therapy animals, can be trained and can recognise their cow friends and humans. More than just a beef burger... |
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Sheep Were once a highly protected commodity of Spanish royalty. Wool clothed and warmed generations of people, dressing soldiers for several world wars, creating an economy that brought prosperity to a former prison colony. They have individual personalities and best friends and can be also be depressed. Sheep have excellent eyesight, hearing, a strong sense of smell, and a remarkable spatial learning ability. Perhaps sheep are not the ‘dumb’ animals we make them out to be; rather, they are sentient creatures endowed with all the sensory and cognitive faculties as most mammals. Sheep are highly adapted to, well, being sheep!
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