Author: Jonathan Balcombe
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 0230552277
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
The recognition of animal pain and stress, once controversial, is now acknowledged by legislation in many countries, but there is no formal recognition of animals' ability to feel pleasure. Pleasurable Kingdom is the first book for lay-readers to present new evidence that animals--like humans--enjoy themselves. It debunks the popular perception that life for most is a continuous, grim struggle for survival and the avoidance of pain. Instead it suggests that creatures from birds to baboons feel good thanks to play, sex, touch, food, anticipation, comfort, aesthetics, and more. Combining rigorous evidence, elegant argument and amusing anecdotes, leading animal behavior researcher Jonathan Balcombe proposes that the possibility of positive feelings in creatures other than humans has important ethical ramifications for both science and society.

Author: Matthew Chrulew
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004332235
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Foucault and Animals is the first collection of its kind to explore the relevance of Michel Foucault’s thought for the question of the animal. Chrulew and Wadiwel bring together essays from emerging and established scholars that illuminate the place of animals and animality within Foucault’s texts, and open up his highly influential range of concepts and methods to different domains of human-animal relations including experimentation, training, zoological gardens, pet-keeping, agriculture, and consumption. Touching on themes such as madness and discourse, power and biopolitics, government and ethics, and sexuality and friendship, the volume takes the fields of Foucault studies and human-animal studies into promising new directions.

Author: Jonathan Peter Balcombe
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520948645
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Nature documentaries often depict animal life as a grim struggle for survival, but this visually stunning book opens our eyes to a different, more scientifically up-to-date way of looking at the animal kingdom. In more than one hundred thirty striking images, The Exultant Ark celebrates the full range of animal experience with dramatic portraits of animal pleasure ranging from the charismatic and familiar to the obscure and bizarre. These photographs, windows onto the inner lives of pleasure seekers, show two polar bears engaged in a bout of wrestling, hoary marmots taking time for a friendly chase, Japanese macaques enjoying a soak in a hot spring, a young bull elk sticking out his tongue to catch snowflakes, and many other rewarding moments. Biologist and best-selling author Jonathan Balcombe is our guide, interpreting the images within the scientific context of what is known about animal behavior. In the end, old attitudes fall away as we gain a heightened sense of animal individuality and of the pleasures that make life worth living for all sentient beings.

Author: Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351605941
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
The experience of pleasure, alongside pain, is a primary element of human life. It rules our instincts and desires for food, sex and avoiding various forms of harm. Crucial to psychological and social well-being, it has preoccupied philosophers from Aristotle to John Stuart Mill and plays a fundamental role in moral and ethical theory, especially utilitarianism. More recently, it has become a central subject for psychologists, biologists and neuroscientists. Yet it remains an elusive and deceptively difficult concept. What is pleasure? How does it differ from happiness? Should we value pleasure? Should we value only pleasure? Which theories of pleasure are most plausible? In this rigorous and comprehensive introduction to the topic, Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek unpacks and assesses these questions and many more, including: The history of pleasure from ancient China, India and Greece to modern times Pleasure, sensation, feeling and consciousness What scientific research reveals about the nature of pleasure – can pleasure be measured scientifically? "Higher" and "lower" pleasures The relation between happiness and pleasure Pleasure and pain Pleasure and animals Pleasure as an ultimate good and the relation between pleasure and rationality. The Philosophy of Pleasure: An Introduction is essential reading for students of ethics and political philosophy, and also suitable for those studying related disciplines such as psychology, politics and sociology.

Author: Dr Carol Freeman
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1409482316
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Considering Animals draws on the expertise of scholars trained in the biological sciences, humanities, and social sciences to investigate the complex and contradictory relationships humans have with nonhuman animals. Taking their cue from the specific 'animal moments' that punctuate these interactions, the essays engage with contemporary issues and debates central to human-animal studies: the representation of animals, the practical and ethical issues inseparable from human interactions with other species, and, perhaps most challengingly, the compelling evidence that animals are themselves considering beings. Case studies focus on issues such as animal emotion and human 'sentimentality'; the representation of animals in contemporary art and in recent films such as March of the Penguins, Happy Feet, and Grizzly Man; animals' experiences in catastrophic events such as Hurricane Katrina and the SARS outbreak; and the danger of overvaluing the role humans play in the earth's ecosystems. From Marc Bekoff's moving preface through to the last essay, Considering Animals foregrounds the frequent, sometimes uncanny, exchanges with other species that disturb our self-contained existences and bring into focus our troubled relationships with them. Written in an accessible and jargon-free style, this collection demonstrates that, in the face of species extinction and environmental destruction, the roles and fates of animals are too important to be left to any one academic discipline.

Author: Michael J. Glover
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031464567
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description

Author: Marc Bekoff
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313352569
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 748

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Book Description
A landmark publishing achievement on the subject, the new edition of this acclaimed encyclopedia is expanded to two volumes, covering the full range of issues related to animal protection. Expanded to two volumes, the comprehensively updated new edition, Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare: Second Edition is an extraordinary publishing event. It remains the only reference to cover the entire scope of animal rights and welfare from a global interdisciplinary perspective, with an international team of contributors assembled by Marc Bekoff covering animal treatment issues in the United States, China, India, Kenya, Australia, and many other nations. With a focused emphasis on fairness and justice for animals evident on every page, Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare: Second Edition offers clear explanations of hot-button topics like puppy mills, endangered species in zoos, no-kill shelters, dog fighting, factory farming and disease, veganism, conservation ethics, wildlife contraception, and more. The encyclopedia also explores a range of religious, ethical, and philosophical views on using animals, as well as the latest research on animal cognition and sentience. The work helps readers understand the different viewpoints of animal welfare advocates who want to improve conditions for animals and animal rights activists who don't want animals used at all.

Author: Justin Gregg
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191636029
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
How intelligent are dolphins? Is their communication system really as complex as human language? And are they as friendly and peaceful as they are made out to be? The Western world has had an enduring love affair with dolphins since the early 1960s, with fanciful claims of their 'healing powers' and 'super intelligence'. Myths and pseudoscience abound on the subject. Justin Gregg weighs up the claims made about dolphin intelligence and separates scientific fact from fiction. He puts our knowledge about dolphin behaviour and intelligence into perspective, with comparisons to scientific studies of other animals, especially the crow family and great apes. He gives fascinating accounts of the challenges of testing what an animal with flippers and no facial expressions might be animal behaviour, Gregg challenges many of the widespread beliefs about dolphins, while also inspiring the reader with the remarkable abilities common to many of the less glamorized animals around us - such as chickens.

Author:
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing
ISBN: 1434947033
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description

Author: Carol Gigliotti
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479815446
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
"The Creative Lives of Animals offers readers intimate glimpses of how animals from elephants to alligators to ants apply the creative process in their lives, requiring a redefinition of creativity that includes animals as essential contributors to biodiversity"--