Society

What happened when one woman raised an abandoned squirrel as her own

8 minutes

Goodbye Pixel

Although it felt more like bereavement for a person than the loss of a thing, the death of a pet isn’t exactly like either

Julian Baggini

Happy the person

She has deep emotions, complex social needs and a large, elephant brain. Her legal personhood should be recognised too

Lori Marino

Semiotics of dogs

In all its baroque and sometimes cruelly overbred forms, the dog is a paramount symbol of both human hopes and foibles

Katrina Gulliver

Freefall into darkness

Scientists study animals to illuminate human psychology. So why are we blind to the mental lives of our caged subjects?

Garet Lahvis

Against human exceptionalism

In a tight spot, you’d probably intuit that a human life outweighs an animal’s. There are good arguments why that’s wrong

Jeff Sebo

What the ancient city of Kars looks like from the perspective of its stray dogs

9 minutes

Becoming a centaur

The horse is a prey animal, the human a predator. Our shared trust and athleticism is a neurobiological miracle

Janet Jones

An unflinching look at a provocative public dissection of a ‘surplus’ zoo lion

13 minutes

Are men animals?

Diagnosing men as violent and oversexed beasts is tempting but it’s a regressive idea built on dubious analogies

Matthew Gutmann

Familiarity breeds roach-respect, and even love, for a group of Florida insect farmers

13 minutes

The posthuman dog

If humans were to disappear from the face of the Earth, what might dogs become? And would they be better off without us?

Jessica Pierce

A bluesy ballad tells the story of Old Bet, the first circus elephant in the US

8 minutes