Essential reading for animal lovers and people in the pet care industry

Finding information about any topic, mainstream or niche, is easy. But as an experience designer focused on the animal health and pet care space, I haven’t always known where to look–especially for evidence-based research and perspectives on how science, technology, and societal norms are radically evolving our understanding of animals and our relationships with them.

The list below includes the books, articles, and discussions I have found most insightful and inspirational. Have other recommendations to share? Please email me at julia@pumpkin.care

Books

1. Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal: This book challenges our assumptions about animal intelligence, revealing that we are not the only species capable of thought and emotion. It is essential reading for anyone unwilling to accept the mainstream world’s view of animals and their intelligence, communication, relationships, and emotions.
2. The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants. This is one of the most forward-thinking animal science books published last year. “We need to understand nonhuman communication on its terms,” says Karen Bakker, the co-author, professor at the University of British Columbia, and a fellow at Harvard Radcliffe. In her book, she explains how scientists use improved sensors and artificial intelligence technology to observe and decode how a broad range of species, including plants, already share information with their methods– an emerging field known as “digital bioacoustics.”
3. The Creative Lives of Animals: We see animals through a narrow lens, seeing only bits and pieces of beings that seem mostly peripheral to our lives. However, whether animals are building a shelter, seducing a mate, or inventing a new game, animals’ creative choices affect their social, cultural, and environmental worlds.
4. Just Like Family: How Pets Became Our Companions and Household Members by Andrea Laurent-Simpson: This book delves into the sociological aspects of pet ownership, exploring how pets have become integral members of our families. It connects the somewhat flaccid notion of ‘pet parents’ to a broader societal shift challenging traditional concepts of adulthood, family, and legacy.
5. Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel by Carl Safina: This book offers an intimate view of animal behavior, challenging the notion that humans are the only species capable of experiencing emotions like love, grief, and joy. It brings forth powerful and illuminating insight into the unique personalities of animals through extraordinary stories of animal joy, grief, jealousy, anger, and love. The similarity between human and nonhuman consciousness, self-awareness, and empathy makes us re-evaluate how we interact with animals.
6. Animals In Translation: This book will fundamentally change how you think of animals, their intellect, and how our human barriers may limit our ability to understand and thus protect, communicate, and cohabitate with the creatures we love so much. This amazing work used the mysteries of Autism to decode animal Behavior.
7. The Inner Life of Animals: Love, Grief, and Compassion — Surprising Observations of a Hidden World by Peter Wohlleben: This book changed my life. This is an incredibly compelling view of animal emotions and how they experience and react to life experiences. that all humans can relate to. It “invites us into the incredible world of animal emotion and cognition.
8. The Intimate Bond: How Animals Shaped Human History by Brian Fagan explores animals’ profound impact on human history, from our earliest days as hunter-gatherers to our domesticated present. From the first wolf to find companionship in our prehistoric ancestors’ camp, to the beasts who bore the weight of our early empires, to the whole spectrum of brutally exploited or absurdly pampered pets of our industrial age, animals — and our ever-changing relationship with them — have left an indelible mark on the history of our species and continue to shape its future.
9. The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery: This fascinating book explores the emotional and physical world of the octopus — a surprisingly complex, intelligent, and spirited creature — and its remarkable connections with humans.
10. Alfie & Me: What Animals Can Teach Us About Being Human by Dr. Alexandra Horowitz explores the bond between humans and animals and what our relationships with pets reveal about us. Likewise, read “What an Owl Knows” if you’re interested in further understanding how this bird’s unique sensory capabilities change it’s universe.
11. The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman reveals birds' astonishingly rich and complex mental lives, offering a new appreciation for these remarkable creatures. “As she travels around the world to the most cutting-edge research frontiers, Ackerman not only tells the story of the recently uncovered genius of birds but also delves deeply into the latest findings about the bird brain itself that are shifting our view of what it means to be intelligent. It’s both personal scientific, richly informative and beautifully written, The Genius of Birds celebrates the triumphs of these surprising and fiercely intelligent creatures.”
12. The Animal’s Companion: People & Their Pets, a 26,000-Year Love Story by Jacky Colliss. It’s easy to think that the ‘pet parent’ or ‘fur family’ dynamic is a new emergence. But this book helps illustrate how it’s been a dominant societal force for thousands of years and how the history of human-animal relationships reveals how pets have shaped our society and lives. In The Animal’s Companion, the acclaimed social anthropologist turns her eye for cultural investigation to uncover why humans strongly desire to share everyday life with pets. It’s a history that can be traced back to a cave in France where anthropologists discovered evidence of a boy and his dog walking together — 26,000 years ago.

Personal Essays

1. The Youth in Asia: This is an all-time favorite. The first time I heard David Sedaris read it, I cried for weeks. This is a profoundly moving (and hilarious) personal essay and audio recording. “When a pet dies, to what degree can it be replaced by another? And to what degree can pets replace people in our lives?” In more recent books, David Sedaris admits to not being a ‘dog person‘,’ and struggling to understand today’s pet obsession, which only makes the sensitivity of this essay more moving.
2. Melanie Bowden’s Ted Talk: Dr. Melanie Bowden is passionate about starting a revolution in the veterinary industry. Her TedTalk is my recommended ‘wake-up call’ for anyone who doesn’t understand or empathize with the veterinary industry's challenges. Through her forthright description of a day in the life of veterinarians, she hopes to create a better future for the veterinary profession and the animals we all love by developing a better partnership between veterinarians and pet owners.

Research & Reports

1. Human Animal Bond Research Institute. HABRI is committed to supporting scientific research to substantiate what many of us know to be true, that humans and pets share a special, mutually beneficial connection. Their exceptional, evidence-based research demonstrates that people are happier and healthier in the presence of animals. communities.
2. Pet Health Equity Project: An exceptional research initiative at the University of Tennesee, Knoxville, The Program for Pet Health Equity (PPHE) exists to improve access to veterinary care for pets and their families not adequately served by the current system. We promote and facilitate national collaborations and public policy development to remove barriers to veterinary care. Our activities include education, service, and social and public health research.

Documentaries & Movies

1. Inside the Mind of a Cat. Cat experts dive into the feline's mind to reveal the pouncing pet's true capabilities in this captivating and cuddly documentary.
2. My Octopus Teacher: Few animals will challenge our preconceived notions of human intelligence more than Octopuses. After all, are cephalopods likely to think we’re dumb or archaic, seeing as we can’t change our skin color or pattern to match our environment’s? A filmmaker forges an unusual friendship with an octopus living in a South African kelp forest, learning as the animal shares the mysteries of her world.
3. The Hidden Lives of Pets: Lots of people think ‘their’ pet is special, but taking a step back to observe many of the wildly intelligent and skilled animals in this documentary can help us move from a mindset of ‘some animals are very smart’ to a more profound realization of intelligence that may be different, but equally or more profound than our own. This documentary features creatures worldwide and digs into the latest science on our animal friends’ senses and skills.
4. Temple Grandin: It’s not a coincidence that our understanding and appreciation of neuro-diversity in humans is happening at the same time that our understanding and appreciation of the human-animal bond is taking shape. Temple Grandin is a revolutionary, she will go down in history as someone who, by understanding how animals think, changed our understanding of how other people think and our concepts around intelligence and human superiority. In this fact-based movie, an autistic woman becomes an unlikely hero to America’s cattle industry — and to autistic people and animals everywhere.
5. Cat People: This is a light-hearted and fun docuseries. ‘Cat People’ come in all shapes and sizes, but they share a love for their enchanting, unique feline friends. This docuseries reveals their tales and, in doing so, shows how our love of animals is shaping societal norms around intelligence, masculinity, and family structures.

I hope these favorite books, essays, and movies will deepen your understanding of animals inspire people to continue their important work in the pet care and animal health industry, and help more designers, entrepreneurs, and young professionals see just how ripe for disruptions and big dreams the field of pet care and animal science is.

It’s an exciting and wildly opportunistic time to be at the forefront of creating a modern, multi-species world!