Jane Goodall started asking people to consider whether we are alone on this planet.

A short tribute to an incredible scientist.

Western philosophers did not hand down a rich tradition of thinking about animal consciousness. But Eastern thinkers have long been haunted by its implications— especially the Jains…

I share my house with a colony of bats.
They live in the roof peak,
enter through a gap.

… but if you were to move your hand slowly over a fly it would perceive your hand much like we would perceive grass growing or ice melting or paint drying: it would be too slow to be visible. So here is a good life hack if you ever want to catch a fly with your bare hands: take your time.

A frog leaps out across the lawn,
And crouches there…

A moth will never know what a zebra finch hears in its song, a zebra finch will never feel the electric buzz of a black ghost knifefish, a knifefish will never see through the eyes of a mantis shrimp, a mantis shrimp will never smell the way a dog can, and a dog will never understand what it is to be a bat. We will never fully do any of these things either, but we are the only animal that can try.

Our Umwelt is still limited; it just doesn’t feel that way. To us, it feels all-encompassing. It is all that we know, and so we easily mistake it for all there is to know. This is an illusion—one that every animal shares.

Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal can only tap into a small fraction of reality’s fullness. Each is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of an immense world.

I feel it’s really important to reach the heart, because people have got to change from within. They’ve got to change because they want to change. And if you batter at them and try to blind them with science, they don’t want to listen to you. But if you can quietly tell a story, then you may reach the heart. And that’s when people change.

An interview with Jane Goodall, primatologist and anthropologist, on her research and what her findings can teach about human nature and the current climate crisis. Goodall highlights how humans are similar to chimps, being capable of both altruism and aggressive behavior. The interview also covers climate change, meat consumption, and how stories can help change people’s views.

We do have something that is very unique about us as animals. And that’s that we can build alliances with any other species […] to build loving, supportive, safe relationships to save us from the difficulties of life

On how advances in science are undermining the dualities we have long assumed separate us from the “lower” animals, and a proposed alternative narrative for what makes humans so special.

These prices are fake. And in being fake, they are warping our whole system: our relationship to the environment, to animals, and to ourselves.

Museum of Nonhumanity calls for the deconstruction of the categories of animality and humanity in order to enter a new, more inclusive era.

The numerous poetic descriptions of forests, parks and gardens in Sanskrit poetry hardly ever omit to mention bees and their humming

… animals are not passive objects for humans to ignore or argue over–or collect–but “individuals with their own perspectives on life,” and members of communities with which our species coexists. That animals are in this sense political actors is an underrecognized and, to my mind, potentially powerful point

What can we learn, and what kind of world would we build, if we learned how to listen to animals?