Second Nature - the Inner Lives of Animals

A radical book calling for a revolution in the way we treat animals. Readers may remember that Descartes regarded animals as automata with little more sentience than machines. This view corresponds to economic exploitation, now practised on a vast scale. The book is divided into three sections: experience, dealing with animal sensitivity, intelligence, emotions and awareness; coexistence, treating communication and even virtue; and the emergence, arguing that we need to rethink our limiting concept of nature as cruel, and evolve beyond the manipulative era of First Nature to that of Second Nature, a new era grounded in science and driven by ethics, in which we treat animals with more respect and consideration. The overall aim of the book is to close the gap between human beings and animals by helping us understand animal experience, of which he gives many examples from different species. In the final section, he looks at population and meat-eating in the context of our overall pressure on the environment. Many people are now aware of the enormous resource intensity of meat production, a point made by Lord Stern when he recommended vegetarianism as a contribution towards mitigating climate change. These behaviour patterns are reversible, but require a new ethical awareness in which we extend our empathy beyond our own species.