Kurt Kotrschal - Our Right to a Life with Animals

What shapes the relationship between humans and animals beyond romanticisation, utility and moral outrage?

This book explores our contradictory relationship with animals, our evolutionary relatives. We both protect and hunt them; we value them as helpers and companions; we eat them and we fear them; and we recognise ourselves in the images and fables we create about them. So what connects us with other animals? Drawing on compelling stories and the latest findings from psychology, biology and ethics, this book presents a wide-ranging portrait of human–animal relationships. It demonstrates why animals, as our other selves, are more central than ever to our wellbeing, health and social order. From this emerges the political task of conceiving a right to live with animals and of redefining their claim to our respect.