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Animate
- Author
- Michael Bond
- Narrator
- Michael Bond
- Publisher
- Pan Macmillan
- Publish Date
- 19 March 2026
- Run Time
- 7 hours 30 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
Read by the author, Michael Bond.
A mind-expanding deep dive into how animals have shaped us, from the palaeolithic to the present day.
In Animate, science writer Michael Bond explores how animals have profoundly influenced our minds and cultures. Drawing on cutting-edge insights from psychology, anthropology, literature and neuroscience, Bond traces the varied ways their lives have affected ours, from our hunter-gatherer ancestors whose brains were rewired by the prey they hunted and the predators they feared, to the medieval and Enlightenment thinkers who used animals to promote notions of human supremacy.
Scientists today are challenging the assumption that we are separate from and superior to animals, showing that they too possess intelligence, empathy, creativity and even the ability to use tools. If everything that supposedly makes us human is shared with other creatures, where does that leave us? And if we are not as exceptional as we thought, how should we be treating the animals we live alongside?
A fascinating exploration of what it means to be both human and animal, Animate shows that to better understand ourselves, we must pay more attention to the other beings with whom we share our world.
Critics Review
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Compelling . . . [an] enchanting and disturbing history of the human animal
New Scientist
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Compelling . . . absorbing . . . excellent
Country Life
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A rich blend of psychology, anthropology and sociology . . . Offers a timely reminder that humans, similarly to all other animals, are embedded in and dependent on the natural world'
Nature
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A collection of stimulating ideas about our true place in the animal kingdom . . . teeming with life
The Irish Times
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Full of wonders and insights, awash with compassion and self-reflection, Animate is an astonishing adventure into our own psychology expressed through our relationship with animals
Isabella Tree, author of Wilding
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Thrilling, effortlessly readable . . . Essential, transformative stuff
Charles Foster, author of The Edges of the World
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Beautifully written, wide-ranging, and impeccably researched . . . Bond carefully traces how we, humans, arrived at where we are today, disconnected from wild animals and their homes and wrongly thinking of ourselves as superior to other animals and separate from and above them.
Marc Bekoff, author of The Emotional Lives of Animals
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I loved Animate. Michael Bond writes with such wonderful empathy and curiosity, and Animate makes the reader see the world – and humanity's place in it – in a completely different light
Tabitha Stanmore, author of Cunning Folk
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In his robust raspberry to human exceptionalism, Michael Bond shows that the lengths to which people have gone to justify our exalted estate only point up our close relationship with the animals with whom we share this planet
Henry Gee, author of The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire
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Details
- Author
- Michael Bond
- Narrator
- Michael Bond
- Duration
- 7 hours 30 minutes
- Release Date
- 19 March 2026
- ISBN
- 9781035021284
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Pan Macmillan
- Genre
- Animals and society / Animal rights - issues and debates, Anthropology, Cognition and cognitive psychology, Animals in the arts
Synopsis
Read by the author, Michael Bond.A mind-expanding deep dive into how animals have shaped us, from the palaeolithic to the present day.In Animate, science writer Michael Bond explores how animals have profoundly influenced our minds and cultures. Drawing on cutting-edge insights from psychology, anthropology, literature and neuroscience, Bond traces the varied ways their lives have affected ours, from our hunter-gatherer ancestors whose brains were rewired by the prey they hunted and the predators they feared, to the medieval and Enlightenment thinkers who used animals to promote notions of human supremacy.Scientists today are challenging the assumption that we are separate from and superior to animals, showing that they too possess intelligence, empathy, creativity and even the ability to use tools. If everything that supposedly makes us human is shared with other creatures, where does that leave us? And if we are not as exceptional as we thought, how should we be treating the animals we live alongside?A fascinating exploration of what it means to be both human and animal, Animate shows that to better understand ourselves, we must pay more attention to the other beings with whom we share our world.
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